


Me Against Your Memory (It's a Two-Step Recovery Process)

by thisiswhatthewatergaveme



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Movie(s), Recovery, Rehabilitation, Tea Parties, but only kind of, hell if i know, sex will probably save the day eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:27:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 56,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1450186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiswhatthewatergaveme/pseuds/thisiswhatthewatergaveme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve takes a breath. </p>
<p>He blows it right back out. </p>
<p>It’s the Winter Soldier who speaks first. “Why does he have my face?” </p>
<p>--<br/>The Soldier needs answers. It's the only mission he has left. And the mission is all he has. But HYDRA doesn't let a good thing go easy-- and a home unremembered isn't much of a home at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End of...

**Author's Note:**

> I just really wanted the Winter Soldier to show up at Steve's after everything had happened with a head full of questions and nowhere else to go.

What line?

 

The soldier has no one to ask.

 

He waits, until the building is empty, until well past its closing hours, to go back into the room. The man with his face— he’s already got all his information. Name, place of birth, date of birth. None of it rings true. None of it rings at all—he doesn’t _know_ this man, doesn’t know any of this—

 

After hours, it’s easy enough to slip in through the window and get what he needs. He does so. It’s a mission, of sorts, even if it’s given to himself, by himself. It’s a directive.

 

Because an asset without handlers is a danger to himself and others.

 

An asset without handlers is useless.

 

Still, he gives himself a moment. The white mannequin is molded to interact with the one next to it. Even as there is no physical contact, they’re connected to one another. It bends as if it was made to bend around the other one, very aware of its space in relation to the other’s.

 

The soldier goes.

 

* * *

 

(Two naked mannequins and it’s still obvious how connected they are, how vital the people they represent were to each other. The soldier is nothing if not observant, and he observes how the two are, together, in old footage, in photos, in the way Captain America _knew him_ —

 

Claimed to know him. Believed he knew him.

 

They say Captain America is little more than outdated beliefs.)

 

* * *

 

 

Steve should, technically, be waking up happy.

 

He’s all in one piece. The country’s all in one piece. Natasha (probably) isn’t getting arrested. It’s a good day.

 

He doesn’t wake up happy. He barely wakes up at all. It’s eight—an hour and a half later than he usually allows himself—and he drags himself off to his run almost on autopilot. If he doesn’t keep moving, keep doing _something_ , he’ll stop. If he stops, he’ll think. If he thinks, it’ll only be the same sequence: flashes of psychosomatic pains across his face, the smell of a burning ship, Bucky’s eyes completely cold and blank and unresponsive, except for a moment.

 

And, of course, whatever happened next.

 

But he won’t think. He does his run, hard, a hood pulled up over his face just in case. Twenty miles, and the hour isn’t up yet, so he settles into a walk, quick enough that his muscles don’t bunch up, but slow enough that he can stare at the sun rising, and will himself to calm down.

 

Every head of shaggy brown hair has him tensing up and turning around. But he wouldn’t know what to do, if it _was_ him, anyway. He wouldn’t know how to react. How _he_ would react. Would he throw a punch? Would he smile? Would he recognize—

 

Steve sets off at a jog that only stays a jog for five minutes, and logs three more miles before calling it quits. He legs it back to the apartment that is only his for three more weeks, and shuts himself into the shower in the hope that the water will drown out his own stupid, _stupid_ stupidity.

 

* * *

 

He knows he shouldn’t be here, knows it’s a bad idea, tactical misconduct at the very least, but he has to know.

 

He’d called him _Bucky_. He knew how to read people, knew their tells. That wasn’t just a name. There was nothing casual in the way the captain had said it. Such fervor. Such disbelief. Such desperation.

 

It was fascinating. It was disturbing.

 

His handlers hadn’t found him yet, and they wouldn’t, until he wanted them to. He had time to handle this correctly. He had time to think it out, figure out his next move.

 

He has no excuse, then, for sitting on the man’s fire escape, waiting for him to recognize his presence. To see if he’d take him for foe or friend.

 

All he needs are answers. That’s all. That’s all he’s here for.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve goes from the bathroom to the hallway, locking the door behind him and going down the stairs two at a time, because he can’t stand to be inside, right now. The sun is shining. Too much is happening. His phone pings halfway to his bike.

 

 ** _N:_**   _Hearing done. Heading to coordinates_.

 

He frowns. It doesn’t sound like she’s been arrested, but it’s Nat. He’s willing to bet she ran out on the hearing before it was done.

 

 _Meet you there_ , he sends back, and guns it.

 

At the cemetery, nothing is answered, but at least they have a plan, of sorts. And Sam’s a comfort—he smiles like he’s relieved at the way things have turned out, happy to have a direction, and Steve doesn’t blame him. It’ll be the waiting that’s the worst, then, but he won’t be alone, and he grins back when Sam does.

 

“I must have lost my mind,” Sam says, when he walks back to his car, nudging Steve with his shoulder as he passes, and Steve laughs.

 

“You must have,” he says, but Sam’s answering smile is small and fond.

 

They’ll be okay, Steve thinks on the highway, because this isn’t what they were trained for, but they’ve been through worse. They always bounce back.

 

When he gets back home—and he ought to stop thinking about it as home, since the month is almost out, and he along with it—he parks the bike and walks upstairs and thinks about how there won’t be anyone to say hello to. No Kate, because she, a) doesn’t exist, and b) is probably busy attempting to find new employment since he may have inadvertently lost her her job. He hopes.

 

He entertains the thought, for a moment, that she was HYDRA all along, but discards it just as quickly. She’d had a clear shot at him, and at Fury, and hadn’t taken either. He’d take a little hope where he can get it.

 

The only thing he has for company, then, is the creaking of the pipes. It’s not lonely, exactly; it’s not like he has enough free time to get used to the relative silence. But it’s a different sort of routine to readjust to, even if there isn’t enough time to actually _adjust_. He already has a small suitcase out, his clothes strewn across his bedroom in convenient piles. All he has left to do is toss them together and plan this out.

 

He walks inside and takes a moment to breathe into the air. The moving air. He feels his hair ruffle, slightly, in a breeze that shouldn’t be coming through.

 

He’s on the defensive in a moment. His best bet is probably the kitchen. If he can slide in, grab a knife, he’ll have something to fight with. He can just barely see the edge of the window from where he’s crouching, open and shadowed, as if someone is leaning against it.

 

“I guess I should invest in a better lock,” Steve calls out. It’s not as if they haven’t heard him come in.

 

It’s quiet for a beat, and then— “Yes.”

 

Raspy, hesitant. It doesn’t sound like someone who’s about to start firing. Still, Steve doesn’t like to go into unknown situations unprepared. He’s left a knife on the counter from the night before; he grabs it, then straightens up, tucking into his waistband and raising his hands to either side of him, palms down.

 

“If you’re here for a fight, you’re about a week late.”

 

“I’m not,” the man in the window says, and Steve doesn’t let himself— _can’t_ let himself—think that it sounds like—

 

Bucky is on the fire escape, his hair long and matted, his eyes a little wild, dressed in the uniform Steve saw him in last, his navy blue jacket buttoned all the way up, his holster empty.

 

“James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky intones, his eyes fixed to some spot on the building next door, his lips barely moving. “Born 1917. Missing in action, presumed dead, 1943.” He stops speaking, his hands fidgeting against the lapels of his jacket. The uniform doesn’t fit him right—the metal arm has ruptured a few threads, and even his flesh and bone shoulder is too broad, now, for the jacket to fit around him comfortably. He swivels his head around to stare at Steve, unblinking, barely sweating in the full spring sun. “He has my face.”

 

Steve doesn’t know what to say. Not _he is you_ , because that isn’t right. Not _he was you_ , because what if he could be? Again?

Not _you’re the same person_ and not _I missed you_ , because he doesn’t believe in pushing his luck.

 

Steve takes a breath.

 

He blows it right back out.

 

It’s the Winter Soldier who speaks first. “Why does he have my face?”

 

Steve still doesn’t know what to say. What he _can_ say. His bag is still half packed on the bed, the person he’s chasing is right outside his window, and the knife tucked up against his back is telling him that any way forward is going to be the wrong way.

 

He tries to smile. “You might want to come inside.”

 


	2. In the living room, where...

Two glasses of cold lemonade sit sweating on the table in between them.

 

Captain America and The Winter Soldier.

 

Separated by two tall glasses of lemonade.

 

Steve takes a sip of his.

 

The soldier continues to stare at the same spot on the wall that’s been slowly roasting away under his scrutiny for the past ten minutes, fidgeting around like his skin is crawling.

 

Steve is very uncomfortable.

 

It’s not even because this is a Bucky who _isn’t_ Bucky. Not really. He hadn’t had time to read the file as throughly as he’d have liked to, but Natasha’s hints are thorough—he knows they’ve done a number on him, multiple times, knows the old him might not even be _in_ there, but whatever he’s left with needs saving, and it’s something Steve can do. Can try to do. Owes it to him, to try.

 

But he was expecting violence. Resistance. _Something_ to have to fight through.

 

Not this.

 

Bucky is all empty, shell-shock eyes and straight, unfeeling mouth. Even when he speaks in his short sentences, it’s like his face refuses to move for the communication. It’s like he hasn’t been left with enough to interact _with_.

 

And Steve doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.

 

“You must have been out there for a while,” he says, for something to fill the silence. Bucky doesn’t blink. “You should have some of that.”

 

No response.

 

“It’s not like it’s poisoned. You’re—you’re safe here. I won’t try anything. SHIELD’s… not exactly functional, at the moment.”

 

Nothing.

 

“ _Drink_.”

 

Steve doesn’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it does. It’s stress, probably, frustration, definitely, but Bucky snaps to like it’d been an order, takes the glass in hand, and swallows deftly, twice, three times.

 

When he puts the glass down and pulls the back of his metal hand across his lips, Steve opens his mouth to speak.

 

Closes it again.

 

Opens it.

 

“You never answered my question,” Bucky says tentatively.

 

Closes it again.

 

 _He has your face because he_ is you. Was _you. Something like that. You have his face because that’s the one thing they couldn’t be bothered to change about you_. Steve swallows. “I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re expecting from me,” he says slowly, parsing out the words as they come. He’s already _told_ him who he is. Was.

 

And his costume—because that’s what it is, on him. It doesn’t fit him like a uniform. He’d have to contort himself into the shape a dead man took to be able to carry himself in it like it belongs to him—means he’s been to the museum, seen the pictures, the videos of the two of them together, James Barnes’ whole life story.

 

“Who was James Buchanan Barnes?” the soldier asks. His voice is sandpaper rough, scraping out of his throat like he isn’t used to talking in anything more than yeses or nos.

 

Bucky never had that problem. Bucky’s voice came in, solid and sure, whenever there was an opportunity for it, and sometimes when there wasn’t.

 

“You already—”

 

“You were close,” he says desperately, and the way his eyes look, when they finally fix on Steve’s own, make him nervous. “I know that much. You were always together in the— _damn it_.”

 

In his metal hand, the glass has shattered, sending the liquid across his sleeve and the leg of his stolen pants, and he stares down at the mess with a glare, and, for a moment, unbelievably, Steve fights back a laugh.

 

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Bucky growls.

 

“I don’t have any paper towels,” Steve says. Bucky looks up at him, startled. He grins, and shrugs. “I didn’t really think about replenishing. I was getting ready to head out.”

 

“A mission?” Bucky asks, frowning. Steve shakes his head.

 

“Not officially, no.” His frown grows deeper, but he doesn’t ask. Steve tells him anyway. “We were going to go looking for you.” At that, his eyes go wide and alarmed, and Steve rushes to fix it. “Not to bring you in or—you were my—” Steve stops himself as quickly as he can. There’s no dignified way for him to say _you were my best friend_ , so he doesn’t.

 

Bucky still squirms in his seat like he’s heard it, and says a simple, “Ah,” picking glass pieces out of his sleeves. After a moment, he carries on. “And what would you have done? If you’d found me?”

 

“I—” Steve may or may not have neglected to think it through that far. “I didn’t think it would be this straightforward.”

 

* * *

 

A slender arm resting against his—a left arm made of skin and muscle and bone, all the joints original. A smile. A towheaded boy tucked up under his arm.

 

A woman screaming. Two gunshots. Blood everywhere, none of it on him. None of it from him. 

 

The soldier remembers things in short bursts of color and flashes of sound, and they sear against the parts of his brain that have forgotten how to hold them. And this time, there’s no waiting procedure to wipe his mind clean of the interference.

 

In one of his memories, he’s somewhere cold, and there’s an empty bottle in his hand. Someone in the background teases him about a blackout. He remembers not being able to remember the night before.

 

He can’t think of a way to explain that to the American. Can’t find a way to describe the feeling of waking up after a long, uncomfortable sleep unable to account for the time in between.

 

He’s not asking for help, and he isn’t accepting any.

 

Still, the captain, unarmed save for the small knife tucked behind his back, invited him inside, made no move against him, and sits, quietly, patiently, almost peacefully, in front of him.

 

He owes him some sort of conciliatory gesture.

 

“Here,” he says, and pulls, from one of his pants’ oversized pockets, two sharp kitchen knives.

 

“Are those—” Steve darts a glance towards his kitchen. “Are they from—”

 

“Also,” the soldier says, reaching into the other pocket and tugging out a honing steel, “this.” He pushes the pile towards Steve, and attempts a smile when he’s met with an incredulous stare. “I wasn’t sure how you’d take the intrusion.”

 

“Thanks?”

 

“I didn’t remove any of your other weapons.”

 

“My other weapons,” Steve repeats, squinting back at him. He sighs.

 

“The gun under your mattress, the baton in the closet by the door, the gun under the table between us, the throwing knives tucked into the couch you’re sitting on and in your top two dresser drawers,” he lists off, rolling his eyes when Steve’s mouth drops open. Of course he’d checked. The sweep had mostly been for bugs, to begin with; approaching one member of a national organization didn’t mean interacting with all of it.

 

He settles back against the chair, trying to get used to the rough material of his old uniform. Wearing it makes him feel like he _should_ feel like a traitor, but something in his body wants to relax against it, accept it as its own.

 

He can’t accept that, and so he moves to remind himself that this isn’t _his_ uniform. These aren’t _his_ clothes.

 

He fidgets. Something catches against his back, and he tries not to wince at the sensation.

 

“I saw you,” he says, for something else to focus on, because Steve doesn’t seem inclined to talk any time soon. His eyes are stuck on the knives, and he can’t understand _why_. They were returned. He scowls. “In the hospital. You recover quick.”

 

Steve snorts. “So do you.”

 

“Yes, but—” _I almost killed you_. Instead of speaking the words, he pulls out one more knife—the longest of the group—and passes it to Steve, hilt-first. Steve looks up before taking it.

 

“I’m surprised no one stopped you. At the hospital,” he says thoughtfully, placing the knife next to the others and turning the blade on its side. “From what I understand, I was under guard.”

 

The soldier shrugs. “I’m careful. Didn’t stay long. Didn’t have anything to say to you.”

 

“How about now?” Steve asks gently, and smiles.

 

He looks away. “The man with you.”

 

“Sam?”

 

“His flying. I was impressed.”

 

“He’d be pleased to hear that, I think,” Steve says, and he’s grinning, now, and that’s it. It’s all he can stand, because this isn’t something a Soviet asset should be participating in.

 

The Winter Soldier is a weapon, is a tool for the Greater Cause, and he shouldn’t be _making small talk_ with an American icon, with someone who stands for and fights for all the things he’s been trained to fight against, to dismantle. There is still glass sticking to the edge of his arm, and he thinks about what he could do with it, the accuracy with which he could throw the shard, towards the American’s eyes, his hands, maybe, distract him long enough to grab one of the knives and finish his mission, properly, and go back to complete his duty—

 

“Buck—ah. I never asked. What—what else do I call you?”

 

He opens his mouth to say _just a soldier_ , but the words don’t come. Instead, a flash of something cold and a plunging sensation in his stomach. And then ice is creeping down his shoulders and across his back, and he shudders, and he falls.

 

* * *

 

When Bucky crumples, Steve thinks it should be fine. He’s in a chair, it should do its job, hold him up, right?

 

Except he falls _forward_ , because he was leaning that way, and Steve’s quick enough to catch him but not quite quick enough to register that the moisture on his hands isn’t lemonade, because it isn’t coming from Bucky’s arm. No, it’s too warm, and there’s too much of it, and when he realizes that it’s blood, he panics, because it’s 1943 again, and he’s been too slow, too weak, too _useless_ to save him.

 

And for a moment, every bit of training he’s ever gone through is gone. For a moment, he panics.

 

_Why is he bleeding why are we on the floor where are we where’s the ice and the snow why is the light so bright why is Bucky’s hair so long is he breathing what happened why is—_

He counts backwards, from ten, quickly, out loud.

 

And then he says, “We’re getting too old for this,” and tears the old blue jacket apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the reading so far, guys. Much appreciated :) 
> 
>  
> 
> [Still over here, for chats or what have yous.](http://spontaneousfangasm.tumblr.com)


	3. A bullet for your thoughts back means...

The first thing he thinks, when he wakes up, is: _I’ve had worse_.

 

The second is: Fuck _, this hurts_.

 

He takes stock of his surroundings before he opens his eyes. He’s laying on something so soft, it’s uncomfortable.  Somebody’s thrown a blanket over his lower half. He’s on his stomach, with his wounded back facing the air, and it only takes a moment for him to be certain he’s evaded capture, and that wherever he is, his employers are far enough behind that he is a) alive, and b) surrounded by more comfort than he’s afforded himself in…

 

In longer than he could possibly remember.

 

There’s muffled chatter coming from behind the door to his right posterior—and he runs through his most recent topographical knowledge and it’s Steve Rogers’ bedroom that clicks into place.

 

As does sliding, unconscious, onto his living room floor.

 

Still, he’s had worse.

 

Were he any less professional, he would groan. As it is, he settles for blacking out again, and hoping, somewhere in the recesses of his worn-out mind, for a little more clarity when he comes to again.

 

* * *

 

“So you’re telling me,” Sam says patiently, and Steve can picture him with his arms crossed and a disbelieving half-smile playing across his mouth, “you’re telling me the Winter Soldier came around in your best friend’s clothes and passed the hell out into your _waiting_ arms—”

 

“He came to me for answers—”

 

“And instead of letting someone know, oh, I don’t know, _as soon as a world-infamous assassin broke into your home_ , you tried to have a nice little chat over a glass of lemonade.” Steve fidgets with the phone in his hand. He can’t say much to that. “Listen, man, I can follow you into battle, but I can’t follow this. What were you thinking?”

 

“That he might need help, mostly,” Steve retorts. It had taken him half a bottle of soap to scrub the blood off of his hands after he’d cleaned up Bucky’s wounds. “You didn’t see his back, Sam. It was a mess.”

 

“No, I get it. Ex-friend comes in riddled with holes, you help him out. But, Steve, he is _not_ your friend. He’s a stranger. A _dangerous_ stranger. You can’t just—”

 

“I already did,” Steve says quietly.

 

Bucky’s back had been covered with more blood than the three neat little bullet holes seemed capable of producing. When Steve dug one out with the help of one of the first aid kits he had stashed throughout the apartment, he understood why:

 

“ _Exploding rounds_?” Sam had repeated. “What do you mean exploding rounds?”

 

“I mean they burst under his skin _after_ they got there,” Steve had said patiently, rinsing another one off in a bowl of boiled water. “It looks almost like it _bloomed_ inside of him, the way it’s shaped.” The round leaked something green and viscous into the water in a thick ripple that curled around itself, and then fanned out, reaching out to the edges of the bowl. Steve shuddered. “And they’re poisoned. I’m not sure what with.”

 

Steve couldn’t do anything about whatever toxin was working its way through Bucky’s system, but he could clean out its entry, and he did, carefully, while the Soldier slept on, face ashen and drawn, even as far under as he was.

 

An hour later, and Bucky’s still out. Steve’s glad for that; the mystery rounds are soaking in the now-opaque green water, his hands are clean, and Sam—Sam sounds like he’s trying not to yell.

 

“And what if he’d come for a fight instead, huh? What then?”

 

“He didn’t,” Steve says easily, leaning back across his couch. “Look, he was ordered once to kill me, and he couldn’t do it.”

 

“He came pretty damn close.”

 

“The _water_ came close. He just… well, he worked some things out, I guess.” Sam mutter something that sounds like an insult, and Steve snorts. “You realize this just made our job a whole lot easier, right?” There’s silence on the other line for a moment.

 

“My job, yes,” Sam says carefully, and Steve narrows his eyes. “But yours? Nah. This is a whole different playbook. You can’t fight whatever’s in him, because it’s all in his head. This isn’t just fighting the Winter Soldier, Cap. You’re gonna have to—look, have you read the file?”

 

“Some.”

 

“Well, Natasha gave me a condensed version, and it’s enough to make me _very_ wary of approaching your place for a while. And I’m not talking apartment, Steve. I’m talking neighborhood. Your _whole block_. This _city_ , even.”

 

All things considered, the shout that comes from the next room probably doesn’t do much to change Sam’s mind.

 

* * *

 

He knows, as soon as he’s made a sound, that it’s a mistake.

 

Captain America is barging through the door not ten seconds later, his eyes wild, and the soldier grimaced up at him, swinging his body around to sitting.

 

“Sorry,” he grunts, looking away. “Rolled over.”

 

“Right,” Steve says after a beat, and he visibly forces himself to react, uncurling his hand from the doorframe. “Right. Just. Careful.”

 

He bites back a smirk. “I heal quickly, too, you know. I’m hardly on my deathbed.”

 

Steve regards him silently for a moment, and then turns away, walking back out of the room.

 

The soldier is not baffled.

 

He _isn’t_.

 

And he certainly doesn’t relax when Steve walks back in, a clear bowl of something green and rippling in one hand.

 

“What is that?”

 

“It was inside of you,” he says sharply. When he rattles the bowl, metal rounds ring against the sides, and leak out more of the suspect liquid.

 

“Ah,” he says. “Well.”

 

“Well,” Steve repeats, his eyes cold. In a strange way, it’s almost endearing.

 

“I may be in a little bit of trouble,” the soldier admits, and Steve sends a withering glance between him and the mystery poison.

 

He smiles.

 

Steve’s glare grows.

 

“My employers were unhappy with my lack of a satisfactory follow-through.” He shrugs. Employers came and went, some happier than others. The conclusion was usually the same. “I didn’t complete my mission, and so it’s safe to assume I’m up for termination.”

 

Surprise flits across Steve’s face, but it’s replaced immediately by a grim sort of determination, his mouth set in a firm, straight line. “That’s not going to happen.”

 

He snorts. “That’s sweet, but this is HYDRA. I was the best they ever had. There’s nothing—and no one—for them to set against me that I can’t handle.”

 

“Really?” Steve raises one eyebrow and one glass bowl. “I’ve got about three counterexamples for you, Rambo.”

 

“First time I’ve heard you use a reference right, I think,” says someone from the door, and both of them stiffen. It’s only Steve relaxing a moment later that has the soldier unclenching his arms. He’d been so close to reaching for the gun stashed under Steve’s mattress.

 

It’s a good thing he hadn’t. He would’ve shot first, identified later.

 

Sam Wilson—the man with the wings—walks into the room and leans against the door, glancing over at Steve. “I let myself in.”

 

“I can see that,” Steve says drily.

 

The soldier swallows. “I thought you said you weren’t planning on calling—”

 

“SHIELD,” Steve says with a shrug. “Sam’s not SHIELD.”

 

“Alright.” His eyes are sharp on the Falcon. The other man is more at ease than he should be, the soldier thinks. Sam looks more annoyed than anything, and he spares a moment to mourn his slipping reputation before sighing and getting to his feet. “I’ll tell both of you at the same time, then. HYDRA’s after me.”

 

“Huh,” Sam says from the wall, his eyebrows rising. His eyes stay at a brutally unimpressed half-mast, and the soldier grits his teeth into what could, from somebody else, anybody else, be a grin.

 

“You don’t want them to find me.”

 

“And why’s that?” Steve asks.

 

“Because I don’t remember _why_.”

 

The room goes quiet.

 

He can count on one hand the times he hasn’t known what he was needed for.

Hands, feet, limbs, he can’t count how many lives were lost on each occasion.

But—Steve looks at him like he isn’t sure who he’s looking at, or who he wants it to be, and he can’t—

 

 

“The bullets, those wouldn’t have killed me,” he says, a little more fervently than he means to. Steve scoffs, but he carries on. “They had me—” He thinks about ending up on a fire-escape, in broad daylight, in a stolen costume, and grimaces. “ _Muddled_. That makes them a distraction. I was absolutely focused on one thing, one person, and oblivious to anything else. They needed that. They wanted me docile enough to scoop up and use for whatever this is, and I—”

 

He doesn’t know how to explain what it feels like to have control of your body and your mind, and not know how long it will last. They don’t know how it feels to have one or the other always out of your reach. They don’t know what it’s like to scream away at the back of your mind when you see a child walk in the path of a dirty bomb. They don’t know how it feels to not know who you are, or where you’re going, or what you’re feeling—just that there will be a voice, eventually, that knows for you. A steady dose of pain to keep you focused on only what they want, not on whatever mess of misdirected neural signals is masquerading for your brain this week.

 

He’s his own, and he’ll leave without _any_ of the answers he came for if that is threatened.

 

He couldn’t care less about patriots.

 

He doesn’t have a country, and there’s no one he’d die for.

 

“I don’t know what it is,” he finishes, glancing between the two of them. “But I know it’s going to be terrible, and people will _die_.” He leans back, settling his face into something smug and smiling. “Guess your national interests lie in—oh. Look at that. Me.”

 

“Steve,” Sam says, his voice tight. “Can I speak to you outside for a moment?”

 

“Can…” It takes Steve a moment to realize that it’s not a question, but they file out. Sam slams the door behind them.

 

And then there is one.

 

He toys with the idea of plucking out the gun and making an escape of it. Who the hell cares about _Bucky_. It’s a stupid name, for a stupid boy who died for a stupid cause. He flexes his artifical arm in the sunlight. The gold it turns makes him think, for a moment, of a pale, skinny, gold-haired arm pressed up against a wider, bronzer one. He moves the way the image in his mind moves, sideways, and then forwards, illustrating something with animated fingers.

 

He balls his hand into a fist, and the image wisps apart like a desert mirage.

 

He closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

“You need to go back to the damn hospital,” Sam says, as soon as the front door has closed behind them. Steve flinches, but the ground he’s standing on, however thin, is steady.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with me, Sam. I’m not concussed, I’m not a head-case, I just—”

 

“You _just_ believe everything he’s feeding us. That _isn’t Bucky_.”

 

“It isn’t _not_ ,” Steve snaps, and closes his eyes as soon as he’s said it. That isn’t a defense. He knows that. “He could be right,” he says, scowling with his eyes closed. “And if we ignore him, brush off his concerns, how many lives will be on us? How much blood will be on our hands?”

 

Sam sounds like he’s growling. Steve squints his eyes open.

 

“We,” Sam says, slowly and clearly, shoving at Steve’s chest with every word, “are not. Telling. Natasha.”

 

“Absolutely not,” Steve says quickly.

 

“What,” Sam says, still shoving, “the unholy _fuck_.”

 

“Um,” Steve says. “Sorry.”

 

* * *

 

“So I know this sounds kind of bad,” Bucky says, apparently deciding to get chatty, as soon as they get back into the room, “But I may have killed a lot of people to get here.”

 

Steve swallows thickly, but Sam has to hand it to him—when he takes a position, he holds it. “I figured as much.”

 

“Yeah, but,” Bucky says, fiddling with the edge of a sheet, all of his bravado curiously run out. “I wasn’t subtle. Or careful.”

 

“Are you ever?” Sam asks. He knows they call the Winter Soldier a _ghost_ , or _whatever_ , but he was also there for the helicarrier disaster, and, oh yeah, the _Nick Fury attempt._

 

“There’s probably _literally_ a blood trail,” Bucky muses, and when he looks up, it isn’t at them, but past them, through the door, at the window to the fire-escape. “A trail of blood. Most of it mine,” he adds, like that makes it _any_ better. “Halfway across town, but traceable. Definitely traceable. I hadn’t intended on sticking around.”

 

“Oh Lord,” Sam say quietly, letting himself sag against the wall and bringing up a hand to rub at the bone between his eyes. He’s going to have a headache for days. Every time he thinks _Winter Soldier_. Or Bucky. Or death. Or the way his life is going. “My grandmother,” he breathes, “is _rolling in her grave_.”

 

“So are all of our friends,” Steve offers.

 

Sam smiles at him. _I forgot how many of your friends are dead. Is it too late for me to back out_?

He says, “Great. That’s great.”

 

And if he slams his head back into the wall, nobody notices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double the update, double the fuuuun. 
> 
> Due to travel mysteries, updates may be a little sparse for the next week, so I'll try and get them as full as I can before posting, ça va? 
> 
>  
> 
> [Either way, I'm here if ye need me! ](http://spontaneousfangasm.tumblr.com)


	4. I trust you, but I kind of wonder, when you say things like...

“We aren’t going to run,” Steve says, before Sam can start. Sam raises an eyebrow, but he keeps going. “Or hide. They’ll expect that.”

 

“Because that’s the _sensible thing to do_ ,” Sam says slowly, because maybe Steve’s brains are as broken as Bucky’s is, now. Maybe whatever’s wrong with them is catching.

 

Either way, he takes a breath, and considers it. HYDRA would be after them either way—Steve, at least—but they’ll be actively _looking_ for the Winter Soldier. He’d put the odds ten to one that they won’t be looking for their asset with the last man he tried to kill.

 

Steve watches him think it through and huffs out a breath through his nose. “We should go,” he says, firmly, “We’re ready for a road trip, Sam, and if HYDRA follows us, they’ll be expecting the two of us, alone, not their missing operative.”

 

Sam snorts. “So does that mean he came to you because he remembered you? Or because finding you was his best bet at the winning hiding spot?”

 

Sam hears it as he says it, hears how harsh it is, and winces—but he won’t apologize. He isn’t _wrong,_ exactly. It’s just… it’s an unfortunate truth. But Steve’s gritting his teeth so hard, Sam’s jaw is hurting, and he looks anyway.

 

“Either way, he’s here now,” Steve says stiffly, shuffling back so that he falls into some sort of half-lean against the door.

 

It’s Bucky who breaks the silence. “We’re all here. That’s the problem.” His voice is sharp enough for Sam to see the way Steve wilts against the wall. He gets up, stiffly, frowning when his limbs pop on their way to standing, and limps into the bathroom. Steve twitches as if he’s about to move forward, and Sam sees how _twitchy_ he looks, settling himself back down.

 

“It’s really him, isn’t it?” he whispers. He wants to do more than ask. He _wants_ to shuffle Steve out of the room long enough to get him away from the mess that’s found its way to his doorstep, but there isn’t a good enough way to, so all he can do is look at him and hope he gets it.

 

“Not entirely,” Steve admits, just as quietly, as the sink goes on in the other room, “but I think it could be.”

 

Sam lets his breath out slowly, but he’s already made his decision, and he’s always been a little stubborn. “I already told you I was in this with you. But you’ve got to be careful, Steve. Don’t let your hopes get higher than the situation can carry.”

 

Steve smiles. It’s a little sad, how careful it is. “I’ll watch out for him.”

 

Sam snorts. “I guess that means I’m watching out for you.” He shakes his head, but that’s it. His said his piece. All that’s left to do now is to see what happens. If he still believes in Steve—and he does—he’ll let the chips fall where they will.

 

When the soldier gets back into the room, he falls into a half-slump against the headboard, his eyes closed and his body immaculately still. It looks uncomfortable. Like it was trained into him, a way to rest without resting, let his eyes drop without letting his guard drop.

 

Sam tips his head towards the door and Steve follows him out, drawing it shut silently behind them.

 

“We can’t do anything else tonight,” Sam offers, and this time, when Steve smiles at him, it’s a little truer, a little less fragile. “I vote we sleep it off, start again tomorrow.”

 

“Deal.” Steve smiles wider, and Sam grins back.

 

“Great. You got a sleeping bag anywhere? If you grab the couch I can—”

 

Steve huffs out a laugh. “We’ll be okay here, Sam. Go home.”

 

Because _of course_ Steve is okay with staying in an apartment alone with a man who tried to kill him a few weeks ago. That makes sense. “Why would I leave you alone with him?” Sam demands, and Steve _chuckles_ when he glares at him.

 

“What’s he going to do?”

 

“Uh, I don’ t know, maybe try and _kill_ —”

 

“He’s unconscious, Sam. Even if he heals up as fast as I do, he won’t be all that strong for the next few days. I’ll be fine.”

 

“Steve—”

 

 

“I’ll be fine,” he repeats, firm and confident, and it isn’t that Sam doesn’t believe him, as such; it’s more that he doesn’t think he’s seeing clearly. All he sees is Bucky, and that’s sweet, but the man in the next room hasn’t been Bucky Barnes for seventy years, and he doesn’t know how to make Steve _see_ that.

 

He looks at Steve for a long moment, looks at the way his shoulders don’t seem to know if they’re sloping or sagging, looks at how bright his eyes are and how pinched they look around the corners, looks at the flecks of blood that he missed, on his shirt, on his arms. Looks, and closes his eyes, because _damn it all_.

 

“What time do you need me by?” he relents, and Steve’s mouth lifts.

 

* * *

 

“He could’ve stayed,” Bucky says, from behind him, and Steve stiffens—and relaxes, forcibly, breath evening out as he lets go of the door. “He _should’ve_ stayed.”

 

“And here I thought you might like a quiet night.” He tries to smile, but Bucky’s scowling back at him, his arms crossed tight across his chest. The light glints off of the metal in a way that has Steve’s eyes darting around the room for fear of landing on it, calling attention to something he can’t, not yet.

 

“You can’t possibly trust me enough to spend so much time alone with me.” Bucky smirks like he’s figured something out, and Steve raises his eyebrows. “I get it. I didn’t think you’d be able to hide any somewhere I couldn’t find them, but I’ve been surprised before. Did I miss something? Cameras? Surveillance equipment? Have you got bugs in the walls?” He knocks on one, making a show of cocking his head to listen as he sneers.

 

Steve shrugs. “No.”

 

Bucky’s lip curls, but even now, he looks more exasperated than violent. “ _Please_ tell me I wasn’t anything like you.”

 

He says it like it’s supposed to sting, but it has Steve fighting back a smile. There’s too much _you’re such a bleeding heart, Steve_ and _we can’t take in another stray_ and _thank god I’m not as soft as you are, we’d be out on our asses_ for it to cause any kind of pain besides the sudden, kick-in-the-teeth kind, that feels a lot like hope being pulled out of nothing and cutting off his air.

 

And then Bucky looks at him like he doesn’t mean to look at him, a tiny flicker of a glance, a quirk at the corner of his mouth, and Steve realizes that _please tell me_ means _please tell me anything_ , and his heart plunges.

 

“We should eat,” he says, instead of something he’ll regret, and turns towards the kitchen, Bucky following him after a moment. Steve can feel his frown at his back, and it starts him grinning. “Is there anything you don’t like? I can whip something up in a few minutes. It’ll help you get your strength back.”

 

“But…” Steve glances back at him. He’s scowling at Steve like he’s offended, how little the threat of him is being taken seriously, and Steve smothers another smile. “Why are you doing this?”

 

“Cooking?” Steve asks idly, fishing out a pot and setting it in the sink. He flicks on the faucet and turns back to Bucky, crossing his arms. “Mostly because I’m hungry.”

 

“Helping me,” Bucky mutters. “Acting like it’s _normal_ to be helping me.”

 

“Because you’re my—”

 

“I’m _not_ ,” Bucky says. “I’m not him. Maybe I was, but I might never be again.” He walks closer to Steve— _stalks closer,_ his mind supplies, something predatory and measured—and for one horrible moment, Steve feels a burst of apprehension, an awareness of what Bucky is now, what he can’t forget that he is. What he shouldn’t forget. “How can you stand in the same room as the stranger who stole your best friend’s face?”

 

 _Best friend_ rolls off his tongue like an insult, and Steve hasn’t wanted to hit him since he saw his face, hasn’t wanted to hurt him, but _god_ is he getting close.

 

“Fine,” Steve says tightly, shutting off the water and dropping the pan onto the stove with a clatter. “Would you have preferred I turned you away? Shot you point-blank as soon as I saw you sitting out there?”

 

Bucky snorts and says, “Like you could ever,” and then flinches, because the reply isn’t the Winter Soldier, but Bucky, through and through.

 

“I didn’t—” the soldier starts, and his mouth keeps working when his words stop, worrying the letters around inside his cheeks like stones.

 

Steve turns around to give him a moment, fiddling with the dials on the cook top. He thinks about how out of his depth he is, how unsuited for this he is. But this, he can do. He doesn’t look at Bucky when he grabs the pasta out of the cabinet, fishes out the jar of sauce, salts the water, digs in the fridge for something green. All the while, Bucky stands there, at the edge of the kitchen, always present at the corner of his vision. The longer he goes without looking at him, the worse his stomach rolls, the faster his heart beats, excitement and nerves warring with hunger and desperation and after a few minutes, he has to run the sink, just to splash his face with something cold, trying to get himself back under control.

 

“How’s your back feeling?” Steve asks, his voice coming out choppy and uneven.

 

“Okay,” Bucky says.

 

“Good,” Steve says, “That’s good.” And he falls quiet again. Because if he says anything, it will be too much. Or he’ll laugh, or he’ll cry, and either way, no matter what he does, he won’t be able to stop. So he keeps his mouth shut while he makes dinner, mixes and salts and focuses on his breathing and the breathing behind him, in the middle of some sort of weird, delayed panic attack that he sure as hell doesn’t have time for.

 

* * *

 

He’s said something wrong. That must be it, but he can’t take it back. He wouldn’t anyway. Captain America is too sentimental. Too idealistic. It will get him killed.

 

It’s a mystery it hasn’t yet, he thinks, eyeing the strong line of his back as he chops and pours, all of his focus on each individual activity. It’s strange. Being unacknowledged allows the soldier too much time to observe, to calculate and evaluate, to asses points of weakness, avenues of exit, five-hundred and sixty-seven ways to render Steve Rogers useless and incapacitated before he has time to turn around.

 

Five-hundred and sixty-seven ways to refuse his conditioning and stand there, feigning patience, while Steve insists on his silence.

 

His left arm buzzes, and the soldier allows himself a moment to wonder idly if the incapacitating agent the bullets set into the body did anything to the machinery.

 

“You taught me how to do this.”

 

He has decided that if he has to believe someone, he will believe Steve Rogers. Not trust, maybe, not yet, but belief, he can allow himself. And so he will take the little bits of information that he gives him, hoard them away like water in a desert, and he will not forget them.

 

But he doesn’t need to let Steve know that, so when he glances back to gauge his reaction, the soldier keeps his face impassive and blinks at him, once, slow and measured. “How to do what?”

 

“Pasta,” Steve says, frowning slightly, still turned at a strange half-angle from the stove (Five-hundred and sixty-eight. Five-hundred and seventy. His left arm seizes at the joint). “I always used to end up with a soggy, mushy mess. You had little recipe cards, from your mother.”

 

“What happened to the cards?” The question comes out too quickly; he resists the urge to bite his tongue, to physically wrangle it back from giving too much away.

 

Steve’s expression freezes, his voice is tight when he finally answers: “You gave them to the kids who lived down the block, to color on. They ran out of paper, and you said—you said you had them all up here, anyway—”

 

Steve taps, twice, at his own temple, and the soldier feels a strange, buzzing phantom pain at his, the remnants of an old scream scratching at the back of his throat. He clears it, and shakes his head.

 

Steve misunderstands the gesture, and something fierce and protective takes over his expression. “You might not have them anymore, but I do,” he says, _declares_ , like he’s standing up for something that means more than just a few home-cooked meals. “One day, we’ll do it just like we used to. Make the whole thing from scratch.”

 

“I—” _Don’t care_. But Steve is hopeful and wide-eyed, and Bucky can see him, for a moment, just as full of hope and half the size, and his eyes go, instinctively, to a place just below Steve’s shoulders, where his eyes used to be, a lifetime ago. “I see,” is what he says, and both Steves nod, and there’s something calming about the dimensions of their smiles. Smile. Only one, repeated twice. The same face, only different. Like—

 

The soldier stops himself there. There’s no comparing the two of them. Steve is the same person, with a different face. The soldier is a different person, with the same face. Both sides of Steve fit. The soldier is not so lucky.

 

“You might as well go and sit down,” Steve says, and still, he’s smiling at him, his body held loose and at ease, and the soldier wants to—he wants to relax like that. He wants to know how that feels, and he doesn’t. He knows how to fake it, and so he does—lets his shoulders rest a notch below where they ought to and forces his brow to smooth out, resting his right hand against the wall behind him.

 

“I’ll wait,” he says, calmly, his voice pitched low and even. He’s doing everything right. He’s _radiating_ calm, overflowing with it. There’s no reason for Steve’s smile to fall away as soon as he speaks. No reason for the way he tenses up again, nervous and ready. “Is something wrong?” the soldier asks, because he _can_ , because an alliance should mean an equal participation.

 

Steve’s smile, when it comes back, is bitter. “Not a thing,” he says, “not a thing.”

 

When the food is finished, he carries out both plates and two full glasses of some sort of cider, and sets the soldier’s down opposite his own. They eat in an uncomfortable silence, and again, he’s unsure where he’s misstepped. And so he attempts, again, through the meal, to broadcast comfort and ease. He smiles, once, when Steve looks up at him. Steve only looks away.

 

So the soldier watches him. His eyes are blue, and bright, and dance around his plate without seeing it, moving on the wheels of a quick mind rather than any sort of true focus. Outside of his uniform, he looks no smaller, but he does look less of a threat. There’s something beguiling about the softness of his mouth, the length of his eyelashes, the smoothness of his hands. The soldier is pitted with scars. He is a canvas of them, not all of them deep, not all of them large, but so many present that he can map out a history with them, even the parts of his history that he does not know. There is nothing about him that is soft. Nothing about him that could be considered vulnerable.

 

“Lost your taste for Italian?” Steve asks, glancing up with something like a challenge in his eyes. “You haven’t eaten much. I have to say, I’m a little insulted.”

 

He nods, curtly, and picks up his fork. He’s done in a few minutes, rubbing the back of his hand across his lips to check for stray sauce. Steve is still looking at him, his lips pursed, like he’s disappointed in something. The soldier stares back.

 

“These aren’t battlefield conditions,” Steve says slowly, lifting his glass. “You don’t have to…” He waves at the empty plate.

 

“Habit,” he says, when he means _training_.

 

“Is staring over food a habit, too?” Steve mutters.

 

The soldier does not fidget. Every move he makes is economical, and deliberate, but still he finds himself shifting in his seat. “Did I make you uncomfortable?”

 

“Slightly,” Steve deadpans.

 

“And what was it before? That made you uncomfortable,” the soldier asks, looking down at the mess he’s left his plate in, and twisting the fork through the sauce. “I didn’t mean to offend.” It’s frustrating, not knowing what to say, what to do. Steve isn’t a traditional mark. There’s no bullet that’ll make this go easier, and he doesn’t appreciate the struggle.

 

He glances back up when the silence draws out. Steve is the one staring, now, a crease between his eyebrows and his mouth half-open, a distraught sort of surprise stuck on its way out of it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he tries, and Steve winces.

 

“No, I—” He frowns. “I don’t know how to do this. I know I said I didn’t think this through, but I really, _really_ didn’t. You’re not—I’m not—I don’t know what to call you! I don’t know how to sit with you and speak to you like you’re a different person than the one you look like, but you _are_ , and I…” He rubs a rough hand over his face, groaning into his palm. “I don’t know what to say here. What to do.”

 

“I tried to kill you,” is the first thing the soldier says, and he stops. He isn’t sure there’s a way to apologize for that, any sort of phrase that can qualify it. He was a mission. Missions are objective. He tries to keep them objective; he doesn’t enjoy causing pains, but it was always to spare more lives than it cost. It was always to a greater benefit than his own. _I’m sorry I tried to kill you_. It’s too much of a lie, and too much of the truth. “I don’t know what to say either,” is what he tries, and the way it makes Steve’s face crumple has him scraping his chair back and getting to his feet, muscles coiled tight for violence he isn’t sure he believes will come.

 

“It’ll be okay,” Steve says, almost like he believes it, and tries to smile. “You know me well enough to know—”

 

“The last time I said that I knew you,” he says, his voice a little harsher than he means it to be, “it didn’t end so well for me.” His skin is _crawling_. It’s no good, being in a space like this. It’s too bright, too open. There’s nowhere for him to hide, here, and nothing for him to hold on to, to fight with. _Knowing him_ means a wiping, means pain and fire and electricity and a blank slate where he should be and he can’t, he _can’t_ —

 

“Nothing is going to happen to you here,” Steve is saying, and it takes the soldier a moment to realize that he’s said it more than once. Steve’s on his feet now, hands raised, but he’s kept his distance, and, distantly, he appreciates it.

 

His hands are raised into loose fists, his feet spread shoulder width apart, his knees slightly bent. He’s holding himself like he’s ready for a fight. Steve is staring at him with equal parts concern and determination, and it’s like a shock of cold water to the face, seeing him in front of him, breathing steadily, his hands stretched towards the soldier, slightly, like he’ll pull him in, if he allows it.

 

A part of him, a part that isn’t used to _existing_ , wants to allow it.

 

He swallows.

 

“I still don’t know what to say,” he says, his voice a little rough, but it makes Steve smile, and both of them drop their hands.

 

“I still don’t know what to call you,” Steve says, the corners of his mouth curling higher into something warm.

 

“Bucky,” the soldier breathes, and it’s clunky and uneven on his tongue, and it feels like a secret, to use it. Like trespassing. “It’s what you’re used to, isn’t it? It’s a start.”

 

“Sure,” Steve says, “sure.”

 

 _Bucky_. He almost smiles back.

 

* * *

 

 After dinner, Steve chatters.

 

He has to, really. He’s the one who started this, Bucky pacing in the corner of the kitchen and pretending he isn’t, stepping from side to side, forwards and backwards like he’s mapping out the square of his cell. He starts talking to distract him, and then he starts talking to distract himself, and then the words are coming quickly and easily and he doesn’t have it in him to stop them.

 

He talks about aliens in New York, about tall men who call themselves gods, about how strange it was to wake up from the water and wonder, first, why he was wearing so little clothing. He talks about Sam and the music he’s sent him, how incredible it was to see him fly, how many people are flying, now, and how strange it is to see men with their bodies free against the air. When the dishes are done, he says _HYRDRA_ for the first time, and Bucky’s eyes on him are wide and black and horribly empty.

 

“They wanted to take away everybody’s freedom,” Steve says, quickly, before he can doublethink himself. “The same way they took away yours.”

 

“It’s always nice to know what you’re fighting for,” Bucky says darkly, and his eyes are on his metal arm, flexing his fingers out and curling them back in. Steve’s eyes always land back on the red star, scratched and a pure, burnished red at the center, brighter than blood. He moves the fingers in a careful pattern, like he’s been conditioned to keep them moving a certain way, to keep all settings functional

 

“That’s why you kept hitting me, isn’t it?” he says, almost by accident, his mouth and his brain moving at an equal pace. “Pain response. You experienced pain when you said you knew me, so you delivered pain when _I_ said you knew me.”

 

“Don’t,” Bucky says, and his eyes close. A muscle at his jaw tics. Before Steve can apologize, he says, “Don’t birng some sort of science to it.”

 

“You were scared. It makes sense.” Steve should leave it alone, he knows he should leave it alone, but he has to know. Just this. Just once. “You were scared, and you fought back against that fear, and I was just the one unlucky enough to bring it up to you. And I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s not—” He shakes his head sharply, glaring back at Steve. But Steve is so close to whatever this is. Too close, maybe.

 

“ _I_ was the fear, wasn’t I? It was me that you recognized, my fault that you—that they did whatever it is they did to you. Knowing me meant some sort of pain, and you know that, and so you tried to prevent it—”

 

“Please—”

 

“Because if you were attacking me, it meant you were attacking—”

 

“You were a _mission_. You were a target. All you were was a mark,” Bucky spits, but Steve has it, now. He has it.

 

“If you knew me, it would’ve just meant more pain, wouldn’t it? It would’ve meant that you couldn’t complete your mission. They conditioned you to associate me with pain. But you stopped.” He takes a step forward and reaches out without thinking about it; Bucky goes fight-or-flight rigid, and he lets his hand drop, and lets his voice lower. “When was it? When did I stop meaning pain?”

 

For a moment, he sees anger, there, and Bucky’s face is something ugly and warped and vicious—and then it’s gone, and that’s something worse. It’s terrible, to see his face empty. It’d never been empty like that. “Who says you have?” he says quietly, and turns away from Steve, out of the kitchen, back to Steve’s bedroom with his head held high and stiff and dangerous. And Steve sags against the counter for a moment biting the insides of his cheeks, because he deserves that. He shouldn’t have pushed. Not like that.

 

He gives Bucky a few minutes and then walks back to the room, tapping once at the door before opening it.

 

“Hi,” he says. Bucky’s sitting on the bed with his legs crisscrossed in front of him, his trousers folded carefully on the floor, next to the bed.

 

“Is this alright?” he asks stiffly, and Steve smiles.

 

“Of course. I’ll be on the couch. Should I close the door?” Bucky blinks back at him, and shrugs. He’ll leave it a little open, he thinks. He doesn’t need him feeling like a prisoner. Not on top of everything else. “Try and stay off your back. I can bring you your other clothes in the morning. I, uh. Darned the coat, while you were sleeping.” He’d see how the bloodstains looked tomorrow; his washer had yet to let him down. “And Sam’ll be over in the morning,” he adds, and stops himself, because it’s late, and he doesn’t need to carry on for an extra hour.

 

Bucky nods, curt and calm, and Steve is, for a moment, horribly, guiltily glad for it.

 

 “Get some rest, soldier,” he says, and a small half-smile quirks at the corner of Bucky’s mouth. Steve’ll take it.

 

“Goodnight, Steve,” he says.

 

Steve drops off as soon as he switches the light off. The logical part of him thinks about what Natasha would think about that, what either her or Sam would say about it, about security measures, about _how stupid can you be, Steve_? The less logical part of him thinks about sharing a house with Bucky again, and how quickly it made the apartment feel like home.

 

The logical part of him laughs. The logical part of him has him tuck a knife up under the couch cushions, just in case.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good god I'm so sorry. I disappeared for a vacation and it was a little tricky to keep this going but look! Back again! If this feels a little filler-y, I'm sorry. [Feel free to come complain to me!](http://spontaneousfangasm.tumblr.com) And/or nag for updates, I suppose.  
> But here it is! Progress, I hope.  
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Because of that last 'goodnight'...

He wakes up silent and frozen, his limbs tense and coiled and his heart threatening to burst. His fingers scrape at his chest against ice that isn’t forming, that isn’t there, that won’t be there again, that _isn’t there_. _Washington, D.C., year 2014, apartment, Steven Rogers_. He lists it out to himself silently, and then repeats it, twice, three times, five, until his heart rate is slow enough that he can breathe without threat of hyperventilation.

 

It’s an old habit—he knows too little, now, to lose what he knows for sure. Where he is, when it is, his objective. He breathes out, slow and steady, through his nose, and stretches his limbs out, careful not to make an undue amount of noise. He’s on his back, and he registers a slight surge of pain between his shoulder blades, but it’s dulled to an even enough ache that he can bear it. The bed smells of something floral and generic; there’s nothing on the walls. There’s light enough outside that he’s sure it’s very nearly morning, so if he can lie there for a few more hours, he’ll be fine. He’s done worse for himself, all things considered. At least Steve’s bed is warm.

 

(Warm and soft and he’s dirtying the pure, white sheets with the blood and dirt and sweat in his hair and down his back, and if that isn’t appropriate—)

 

It’s almost too soft, and he isn’t surprised at the direction his dreams went. If anything feels suffocating, it’s this heavy, cotton bundle, curving up towards him on both sides, ready to hold or strangle, undecided as to which.

 

(It’s very appropriate.)

 

He gets his breathing under control and angles himself a little to the right, to take some pressure off the worst of his wounds, and then he thinks about Steve Rogers.

 

He wasn’t wrong, earlier. The sharp, psychosomatic flare of pain up along his temples at the mention of his name—he wasn’t wrong. But he isn’t sure how to tell him that that’s not the only pain his name comes with. That _Bucky_ comes with.

 

“Bucky,” he whispers to himself, just to test it. It’s strange. A childish nickname from a childhood shared. It’s gentle. Sweet. “Bucky Barnes,” he says, high and mocking, flexing his hands together above him. It’s wrong and ridiculous, but so is _Winter Soldier_ , now, because a soldier without a war has no place.

 

(An asset without handlers—an asset rogue— is a danger to himself and to others and must be put down.)

 

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, and he tries to say it the way Steve said it, before, above, with an aircraft on fire around them. Declarative. With intent.

 

(He’d seen his own face, bowed up into an honest smile, leaning back against Steve Rogers like they were sharing a joke. He’d seen Bucky Barnes, happy and so alive.)

 

He closes his eyes, for a moment, hoping for sleep but expecting none. When he opens them again, the light outside is brighter, and James feels better against his ears than Bucky does. He supposes that’s some kind of progress.

 

James Barnes rolls over and slides onto his feet, careful not to disturb the box springs. This is, he reminds himself, first and foremost a fact-finding mission. It’s why he inches his way across the room, wary of the floorboards, towards opposite corner of the room. There’s a low shelf above a wide wooden desk, and the papers on it looks promising.

 

The beauty of fact-finding missions is that they ask for no thought. It is only action and absorption, stealth and concentration. He can do that. He can put aside thoughts of himself, Steve Rogers, everything, and make these moments objective.

 

And so when he shifts through the first file on his desk, and sees two pictures of his face, and sees the ice that he dreamt of, and sees the army uniform he never wore, he does not flinch. He does not react. He reads, and he absorbs.

 

* * *

( _The Winter Soldier was a joint HYDRA and Soviet…)_

( _Test trials indicated that the frequency of cranial recalibration led to increased_ …)

( _Arm reacts favorably to all conditions. Further test show that ligament strength is retained due to strategic use of vibranium alloy_ …)

( _Kill order on_ …)

( _Second kill order carried out_ …)

( _Kill_ …)

( _Kill…_ )

( _Instability after prolonged_ …)

 

* * *

 

He does not throw the files. He does not shred the documents. He crosses his hands behind his back and takes a step away from the papers, and breathes slowly through his nose, and counts backwards from a hundred, trying to settle enough to retain the information without thinking about it. Fact-finding, absorption. Not thinking. Not evaluating.

 

( _Sergeant… 325575…_ )

 

The kill list is longer than he thinks he’s been alive.

 

( _Your work has been a gift to mankind_.)

 

His metal hand presses, hard, against the flesh one, until he feels bones grind.

 

( _You shaped the cent—_ )

 

He leaves the room and crouches in the corner of the living room and tries to regulate his breath, because if he doesn’t, Steve will wake up, and he’ll look at him, and he isn’t sure what he’ll do if he sees his face right now. He isn’t sure what will happen, and he sure as hell doesn’t trust himself. And Steve— Steve has _no business_ trusting him.

 

He can see him from where he hovers in the shadows, see his arm draped over the arm of the chair. Steve moves when he breathes, and his fingers twitch, slightly. He’s less than a perfect soldier, James thinks, to be so un-alert as to not hear the sound of another man’s rough breathing, the rustle of papers, footsteps that are decidedly less quiet than they could be. It’s pathetic. He stands up and walks closer, just to see what it will take to make the captain more aware. It isn’t walking up to the back of the sofa. It isn’t setting his hand against it. It isn’t moving around it and bending down to face him, close enough that he can see the way his eyelashes flare out against his cheeks. Still he sleeps, breathing deeply, curled in on himself, almost too big for the wide couch.

 

James is the Winter Soldier. James could kill him here, and he would be defenseless. He would be _dead_. He watches Steve Rogers sleep and thinks about how easy, how quickly he could do it. Perhaps the man has a death wish. There’s certainly _something_ wrong with him. It doesn’t matter who the soldier—who _James_ was. He isn’t him, not anymore. He isn’t safe.

 

Steve sleeps, and he watches him. He—

 

He knows how—

 

(There’s sunlight, again, for a moment. There’s snow. There’s a helmet that falls just over the crests of his cheekbones.)

 

He reaches up his metal hand and traces the air right above Steve’s face, smiling slightly. The sleeping soldier’s eyebrows crease, for a moment. His nose wrinkles and James draws back, curling his hand back in on itself.

 

(Somewhere in his memory, another nose, the same nose, scrunches up, in pain, he thinks, blood welling up below it, big blue eyes watering. _Jesus, Bucky, I’m fine, let go of me_. He isn’t fine. Two days ago, blood on a handkerchief. Three days ago, bedridden.)

 

He waits for him to wake up, and he watches. He lets the starburst flashes of memory come when they do. He’s patient. He’s a soldier. He knows how to be patient. 

 

(He doesn’t know how to tell him how long he assumed it wasn’t— _Steve_ wasn’t—real. He doesn’t know how to tell him he thought he was imaginary.)

 

( _Instability increasing. Subject claims to retain memories of a “Steve Rogers.” Has been receptive to assurances of hallucinations being commonplace. Subject remains under intensive observation_ …)

 

* * *

 

Sam walks up to the door bleary eyed and running on far less sleep than he’s comfortable with. He doesn’t want to name names, but it’s a little hard to sleep knowing that your friend the national icon is sleeping ten feet away from the world’s most wanted boogeyman.

 

He knocks, and closes his eyes for a moment. It’s an apology— _dear body, in the future, we’ll sleep. We’ll sleep so hard. It’ll be great_. When he opens them, he has to close them again, because maybe this is one of those night terrors they talk about. One of those, you know, half-asleep-and-you-think-the-shadows-are-moving sort of things. Because there’s no way the Winter Soldier is the one answering the door. Steve definitely would’ve given him a heads-up. Steve definitely isn’t dead somewhere, or incapacitated, or—

 

He squints one eye open. The Winter Soldier is looking back at him with tired, steady eyes. He’s wearing pants and a beater and has his metal hand tucked up against the doorframe. He is very much _there_ and Sam isn’t sure what to say about it.

 

The Winter Soldier nods to him, and Sam says, “Good morning” on reflex because his mama raised him right.

 

The soldier hesitates, but nods again. It’s interesting—he doesn’t look uncomfortable, nothing so unprofessional as that, but he doesn’t meet Sam’s eye in a way that isn’t subservient so much as wary.

 

“You feeling any more sprightly?” he asks carefully, and what might pass as a smile sends a twitch through the man’s lips.

 

“I’m alive,” he says, and it doesn’t sound all that positive.

 

“Where’s Steve?”

 

“Sleeping,” he says sharply, and looks at Sam like he’s daring him to ask.

 

“Why aren’t you?”

 

“Couldn’t,” he says darkly, and Sam huffs out a laugh.

 

“It’s okay,” he says, smiling at him. “You’ll get used to it. Now…” He clears his throat. There’s the slightest twinge of anxiety when the soldier jumps at it. “Let’s get Cap up, shall we?”

 

There isn’t much by way of an explanation for why the soldier’s mouth twists into something crooked and bitter, but he opens the door anyway, and Sam’s grateful for it.

 

“He really does think he can fix you,” Sam says, and he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a little wonder to it, and more than a little skepticism.  When he moves past him, and he doesn’t need to look back at him to feel the way he’s stiffened up.

 

“You don’t,” the soldier rasps. Sam wonders if he’s thinking the same thing. If he’s wondering what the hell Steve’s thinking, too.

 

“You wrecked my ride,” Sam says easily, moving towards the living room. “Ain’t nobody can fix the kind of dude who does that.”

 

It doesn’t feel like it’s too much to say until he hears a door slam, but he isn’t enough of an optimist to think the Winter Soldier’s beat it. He’ll be back. And, Sam thinks, when he sees Steve, very much alright, sitting up and stretching out the kinks in his neck, he’s maybe halfway to where he needs to be.

 

“Wilson,” Steve says, grinning toothily up at him.

 

“Captain Death-Wish,” Sam greets back, and Steve laughs. “Seriously, man. Why were you asleep with an assassin walking around your house?”

 

“Why?” Steve sobers quickly, sitting up and tossing his blanket over the side of the couch. “Where’s he gone?”

 

“Nowhere,” Sam says, hoping he’s right. “Just waiting outside. Car’s ready to go.”

 

“Sam…”

 

“We’ll talk about where we’re going once we get there, Steve. Right now, you’ve got clothes to put on and a shower to take. Not in that order,” he calls after him, when Steve walks towards the bathroom, and gets a chuckle thrown back for his trouble.

 

It’s not that he tries to talk himself out of it, really, but he doesn’t think he’s going looking until the door’s open and he’s peering down the hallway. Bucky isn’t there.

 

He has time. He goes down the stairs and out the building’s door and it isn’t until he hits the parking lot that he sees a telltale glimmer of silver perched on the handlebars of a motorcycle, tracing over the light. He stands there, for a moment, watching him. He’s zoned out completely; his eyes are unfocused, his movements slow and easy, and it’s the first time Sam’s seen him look at peace, for all that he must know Sam is there.

 

“How do eggs sound?” Sam asks after a few minutes, and when the Winter Soldier looks up, he looks almost human, and it sends an unhappy, _guilty_ twinge through Sam’s stomach.

 

“Eggs,” he repeats.

 

“For breakfast,” Sam says. “Thought we might as well have a big one, before setting out. “

 

He swallows, and nods, moving away from the bike.

 

“Good,” Sam says, “good.” He leads the way back inside, back up the stairs, and tries not to think about how dead he could be, if things were different. “I’m Sam, by the way,” he says, and sees the soldier angle his head in acknowledgment. “Since you, you know, never asked.”

 

“Sam Wilson,” he says wryly, “Pararescue. I’ve heard.”

 

“Why? Steve talk about me?”

 

“… No,” he says, but walks a little quicker the rest of the way up.

 

When they’re in front of Steve’s door again, the soldier turns back to him, and stares. And stares. And—

 

“ _What_?”

 

“James,” he says, like it’s a struggle to get out. As soon as it is, though, he looks a little lighter. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes. Steve calls me Bucky. It just…”

 

“It doesn’t fit yet,” Sam guesses, and James-or-Bucky closes his eyes and nods. “It’s alright, Barnes. You’ll get there.”

 

His mouth twists into a wry little smile when he opens his eyes. “You don’t think he can fix me.”

 

Sam shrugs and smiles back at him. “I didn’t think men could fly, without a plane. Look at me now. Or, I guess, then. You know, pre-” He makes a tearing noise with his mouth, and Bucky looks away.

 

“Sorry about your wings,” Bucky says. Sam laughs.

 

“You should be.” When Bucky walks into the apartment, his shoulders rest a little loser, and Sam huffs out a sigh. He’s never seen a case like this, but he thinks that, maybe, it’s a good thing that he’s sticking with them. Because they’re both traveling ass-backwards, and at least one of their party needs their head on right.

 

He walks in after the Winter Soldier and lets the door fall closed behind him.

 

It’s lucky, really, that he takes a deep breath. It’s lucky, because twenty seconds later, they’re covered in plaster, half the wall is missing, and Steve and Bucky are running towards the door with their clothes in their hands, right behind Sam. Sam who didn’t really think about flying sans-wings, until jumping down the stairs made it pretty damn likely.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya, gang. Super sorry about the dodgy updating schedule. Will do better in the future?   
> Thanks for still reading this sorry mess! 
> 
> [Find me!](http://spontaneousfangasm.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter 6

Summer, 1928. Steve’s mother is still alive. Steve is still very good at getting into trouble. Summer in Brooklyn, the last bites of their ice pops melting into a sticky, wet mess on the pavement.

There’s a smear of blood, next to one of the sticks. It’s from Steve’s palm. The pink-tinted stick has its edge against the stain, and it covers the punch line of the Popsicle’s joke: _swine language._

            Steve and Bucky are two blocks away because of that joke. Because of Bucky. The heat has gotten to him, and his shirt sticks to his back because of his sweat, his hair a mess, and one tooth still missing, letting him whistle when he pulls his bottom lip in, like so. He whistles at the bigger boys who chase them. “Hey,” he says, all swagger, more than he should have, when he stands not much over four feet. “How do pigs talk?”

            And it’s Frankie, who’s thirteen-and-a-half, whose fist is as big as Bucky’s head, almost, Steve thinks, Frankie, who _growls_ ,and says, “You tryna make a point, Barnes?”

            He shoves Steve towards the ground to get closer to Bucky, and Steve hisses in pain when the soft skin of his palms catch against hot concrete.

            They’re in tune in the sort of way that means that, when Steve feels the air change, he knows things are about to get serious. He feels almost excited about it. That’s the Bucky part of him, he knows. The Bucky part of him, in his head, that tends to be very wrong about things. The part that makes life interesting.

            That part of him is, of course, bouncing on its heels when the next thing Bucky says is, “You speak swine language?” and he laughs, high and deranged, when they have to _run,_ because Frankie’s almost got a beard, now, and it’s made his temper that much shorter.

            “Why the heck, Bucky?” Steve tries to ask on the backhand of a wheeze, but that summer’s been hard on him, and he’s not sure, sometimes, if his lungs are still expanding. “Why’d you have to say that to him?”

            “It’s okay, Stevie,” Bucky says, and they’re almost the same height, so when he looks over at him, they’re eye to eye. Steve can see the madness there.

            It makes him want to laugh, too. He thinks the laughter might be what gets them three alleys away.

            Bucky shoves him back, back behind a little aluminum garbage can, and winks at him. “I’m gonna take care of this, okay? You stay down there.”

            “Don’t die,” Steve says, but he’s resigned to this part. It feels like it happens more and more often, these days. His mother sometimes says that Bucky tends to Lash Out, and he’s not always sure what it means, really, but he hopes they’ve got disinfectant at home, ‘cause his hand _hurts_.

            “I don’t even know how,” Bucky says cockily, and Steve gets back to his feet as soon as he hears Frankie and his gang round the corner.

            “Good thing I don’t, either.”

 

* * *

 

            Bucky stops short in the doorway, and Steve lets out a string of words he tends to save for situations like life or death or civilian-heavy shootouts in the places he lives.

            “Go to the car,” Bucky says, to both of them, with his eyes on Steve. “I’m dealing with this.”

 

            “No, you’re not,” Steve says sharply. “You’re leaving with us.” They have to shout to be heard, even right next to each other; Steve is thanking every god he’s ever heard of, minus the few he knows, that most of the building is out today. Thanking god for pretty weather. “We have to go now.”

            “They’ve seen me,” he says, and his voice doesn’t rise, not the way Steve expects it to. Not the way it should. “Can’t let them report that. Not yet.”

            He turns around and heads back up the stairs with his head tucked low before Steve can get another word in, and he freezes. Sam’s hand is on his arm, Sam’s keys are held out, the parking lot is in front of them, their only way out.

            “He can take care of himself,” is what Sam says after a second, and it’s his tug that sends Steve moving again. “Come on, Cap. Best we can do is give your boy a distraction. If we can get the pilot looking this way, maybe—”

            “He’ll be fine,” Steve says. For both of them. Or maybe just for himself. Just to remember to believe it. “He doesn’t know how to die.”

            “I know that’s right,” Sam mutters, but he nods to Steve before he makes his way out of the building, moving fast and weaving between the cars, just in case they do draw the attention they’re looking for. Steve follows.

 

            They have a few moments before the first shots fall. And whatever they’re firing, it isn’t standard artillery; it takes out the car door Steve has his hand against, and he rolls away from the noxious fumes, one arm flung up over his nose. The hole that the rounds have burned into the car is even on all sides, and the metal is warping. In a few seconds, the whole side of the car is a bubbling, frothy mess.

 

            “Tell me you’re alright, Wilson,” he barks, and he hears a raspy chuckle from a few cars away.

            “To be honest, Rogers, I’m a little worried.”

            Steve hunches his body into a tighter target and gets to Sam as quickly as he can, listening carefully for any incoming missiles.

            “Worried?” he asks, glancing him over for any signs of damage.

            But the look Sam levels him is calm and dry. “Yeah. My car’s a rental. You remember what happened to the last one.”

            He reaches his hand up high enough to unlock the doors, and grabs the backseat handle to pop the door open for Steve.

            “Oh Captain, my captain,” he says, and grins.

            “Gee, thanks.”

            “Anything I can do to help the elderly. Did I ever tell you I was a Boy Scout? Boy, did we—”

            The sound of crashing is what draws their attention away, and what stops Steve, knees bent and arms half-in the vehicle, from diving in entirely.

            In their quest for the relative safety of a moving vehicle, neither of them had bothered to glance back at what they hoped would miss them.

            They can’t avoid this.

            Not when it’s aimed straight at them.

            “In the car,” Sam says, a little fervently, his eyes wide, “now. Now, now, now. Get _in_ , Cap.” The keys rattle, a little, because his hands are shaking, and he’s reversing before Steve’s managed to close the door, out of the line of impact for—well. Steve isn’t sure _what_ it is. Some sort of stealth aircraft. It’s smooth, almost conical, in a dark gray metal, the pilot’s seat shielded by a long, gleaming nose.

            The actual body of the craft is smaller than the full arsenal it’s got clinging to the top, and it’s on the machine-gun fixture to which Bucky is clinging.

            His metal arm is glowing brighter than usual. When the angle changes, Steve realizes that it’s because of something red and shining streaked all along it. He swallows.

            He’s glad, though, that Sam is as deft with the wheel as he is in the sky, pulling the car around next to Bucky in reverse, as the aircraft plows through row after row of parked cars. It’s pilot is nowhere in sight, the glass that should’ve held them in shattered.

Steve doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to think about it, and so he doesn’t. He shuffles it along to the back of his mind and flings open his car door, so that Bucky can aim for them, jumping from the top of the aircraft and landing, a little strangely, on the hood of one car, and then another, his metal arm helping him somersault through the air until he can slide directly into his seat and slam the door behind him, smiling fierce and proud at the both of them through the rearview mirror.

            He drops a small, boxy brown suitcase onto the chair between the two of them. Steve knows that it’s full of clothes. He packed it himself. He blinks stupidly between it and Bucky.

            “We should go. Now,” Bucky says.

            “Any of that blood yours?” Sam asks calmly, with barely a glance towards the case, turning the car towards the road and throwing it into drive.

            “Only this,” he says, pointing at a small scrape at the corner of his jaw.

            “Then try and keep that mess off the seats,” Sam sniffs, and Steve fights back a smile. He’s grateful, for that little show of concern. It means something, even if Sam squints back at Bucky like he doesn’t trust him for the world.

            It’s easy, actually, to get onto the main road. Half of that is because of how many cars have stopped and pulled over, taking pictures of the strange, violent wreckage.

            “I really hope you don’t end up on YouTube,” Steve tells Bucky quietly. He’s still breathing a little hard. The wilderness in his eyes doesn’t look safe, or healthy. Steve isn’t sure what to do—touch him, talk to him, press himself up against the opposite car door and give him as much space as possible. He doesn’t know.

            “Look at you, throwing out the lingo,” Sam says with a low whistle, and Steve laughs for lack of anything better to do. Bucky doesn’t so much as smile. He’s barely blinking.

            “Sam, which way are we going?”

            “Right now? Highway. From there? We’ll see. Actually…” There’s a small whirring noise, and then the back windows are rolling down, and before Bucky’s hair whips around and covers his face, Steve can see the relief that twitches his lips up from the tight, colorless line they’d been pressed to. “We might want a gas station stop sooner rather than later.”

            “Sure,” Steve says, breathing out as slowly as he can and relaxing against the seat. “Alright.”

 

* * *

 

            The heat is a sticky sort of heat, so Steve’s mother is in the bath when the two of them limp back home.

            “You gotta let me make sure you’re okay,” Bucky says, like he’s mad at Steve. He might be: Steve’s stubborn. He’s stubborn enough to keep getting up, even though Frankie’s backhand is the size of his head and his foot is the width of Steve’s chest. It’s just a couple bruises, though. He’ll be fine.

            When he smiles at Bucky, he knows there’s a little blood in it because Bucky makes a face, and says, “Lord.”

            “James Buchanan Barnes, I know you aren’t taking the Lord’s name in vain,” Steve’s mother says when she comes around a corner, in a pretty yellow dress that makes her look just pale, not sickly. Not today.

            She sounds cheerful, she looks cheerful, but when she gets a better look at them, she plunges a few shades whiter and gasps with her hand at her throat.

            “What the devil happened to you boys?!”

            “Bucky’s got a smart mouth, mama,” Steve says, and laughs—groans—when Bucky jabs him in the shoulder for it.

            “I do not!” he protests, his voice shrill and _lying_. “I just don’t wanna deal with Frankie being a jerk all the time. I don’t like bullies.”

            If the word for Steve is _stubborn_ , then the word for Bucky is _pig-headed_ , and Steve thinks it’s an awful funny thing that he accused those boys of swine language when he’s the one being so thick.

            “You didn’t have to say all that stuff, though,” Steve sighs, and his mother is starting to look a little more red than white and he feels like that’s maybe a bad thing.

            “I think maybe,” she says, quietly—so quietly, so he _knows_ this is bad— “Maybe you boys need a little break from each other.”

            “What?” They say it together, because both of them are doubting their hearing right now; they can’t have heard it right.

            “You heard me,” she says, and the smile she gives is a _mean_ one, slow and torturous. “The next two weeks. I don’t want to see you around, James. And Steve, I’m gonna talk to his mama, and you aren’t to go over there, either.”

            “Mama, you can’t—” Steve gasps, but Bucky’s already drawing away, from shock, maybe, from hurt.

            “Mrs. Rogers, ma’am, I didn’t—”

            “I don’t want to _hear_ it, Bucky,” she says sharply, and Bucky goes so quiet so quick Steve thinks the words might turn into gas later.

            He’d snicker at that, if he weren’t in trouble. But he is, and so he looks down at his scuffed-up knees and tries to pretend that he isn’t _thisclose_ to crying from it.

            “Now I love you two boys, you know I do,” she says, walking up to them with her hands on her hips, “but all you two seem to do these days is get into trouble! And you’re _worse_ — _it’s_ worse—when you’re together. Two weeks apart. I don’t wanna hear any sass back, you hear me?”

            “Yes ma’am,” they say together. Steve can’t look at Bucky. He knows Bucky can’t look, back. He’s too big to cry. He _won’t_.

            Steve’s mother sighs and steps away from them. “You alright, Bucky?”

            “I’ll live,” he sniffs.

            “Good,” she says. “Now go home.” She says it gently, but it still smarts worse than any sort of beating Steve could’ve got.

            The door slams behind him like it might’ve been an accident. Steve thinks it was probably a _goodbye_. He hopes there was a _sorry_ included in the shivering of the doorframe.

            “How about you, Stevie?”

            “’M fine,” he mutters to his knees.

            His mother sighs. “Stay away from him. It’ll do you a world of good. I promise.”

            Steve doesn’t believe her.

 

* * *

   The gas station is empty, so it’s a quick pick-up. Snacks, a couple of Cokes, a bathroom break. They’re back on the highway in ten minutes, and Sam is suggesting the last few places that Bucky—The Winter Soldier— was reported to have hit, for them to continue their ‘just-in-case’ charade.

            Next comes the list of safe-houses.

 

            “They can’t think it’s just the two of us anymore,” is Sam’s argument, and he isn’t wrong. But—

            “They might,” Bucky says quietly, and they both wait for him to continue. “The pilot didn’t have a chance to report back. It’s plausible that I broke into Captain America’s home to recuperate, and Captain America was just… not there. It’s why I grabbed that,” he adds, nodding to the case. A few drops of blood have dripped and dried against the handle, and Steve hopes, distantly and ashamedly, that the handle won’t be sticky when he has to pick it up.

            “The cover could be that you left a little earlier. If you go back to Sam’s house—”

            “I don’t think so,” Sam chimes in. “We’re packed, and we’re driving. Straight through. If they don’t know what they’re looking for, more’s the pity. “ He snorts to himself, and mutters, “Not.”

            “I can’t believe you brought down a jet while carrying my suitcase,” Steve mutters, and then curses himself, a little, because _how is he focusing on that_ , out of everything else? The pilot of that craft died bloody. The proof of that is pressed tacky into the grooves of Bucky’s arm, and every few moments, Bucky picks at the bits of it across his wrist, grimacing, like he can feel it. Like it’s an inconvenience. One he’s used to.

            “I’m good at multitasking,” he deadpans, but there’s a hint of a smile in the way his eyes crease when he looks back at Steve. It took a few miles, but the calm—not the eerie, single-minded focus of the Winter Soldier, or the resigned, broken, empty-eyed stare of the captive, just a slow, smooth steadiness— is back in his eyes, and he leans back in his seat when the sun hits him, air flavored with exhaust and car-fumes still clearer, still fresher than what he’s used to, now.

(A container, used to freeze him over. Popsicle veins. Ice all down his back. Held too solid to shudder.)

What he _will be_ used to, Steve thinks fiercely, and allows his slump against the seat to bring him a little closer to Bucky, and just as aggressively refuses to think about it.

Bucky smiles at him. It’s a little forced, a little wrong, but it’s there.

“How about some music?” Sam asks from the front, already reaching for the dial. It’s fitting, then, that as soon as he touches it, the roof threatens to cave in, and they veer off the road.

 

* * *

 

Sam could really honestly live without losing control of the vehicle he is operating. You know how many times he’s been in an accident before these past few weeks? None. Nope. Zero. Not a single one. He is a _good driver_. He’s a _good person_. He doesn’t deserve this.

 

He also doesn’t scream.

 

           

He gets the car back in a straight line and heading the way they were and tries breaking really short but that doesn’t work so he tries swerving a little and a _blade comes through the roof_ and then he’s maybe sweating a little bit.

 

“Guys,” he says tightly, “if you decide you wanna help out a little bit—”

 

He is going to lose so much money on this damn car.

 

* * *

 

The first day it’s alright. The second, it’s a little miserable. Steve spends a lot more time in bed those two days, because his bones ache, a bit. Some of the bruises on his chest have made his ribs tender, and so it’s tougher to breathe than usual. But he can bear it. He’ll be fine.

The third day, he tries asking his mother to reconsider. But she’s already on her way to work, and so he only gets a kiss on the forehead, and a quick, “Be good, baby,” and then she’s gone.

He cooks himself dinner. Beans, toast. He’s used to making two plates, or having two plates over at a different house.

He’s pretty sure Bucky’ll be fine, and that gets him through the day, sometimes. He thinks about the games Bucky’ll play with the other kids on the block. Maybe Timothy, or a quick round of stickball with Arnold. Steve thinks maybe they’d let him play, too, but he couldn’t play if Bucky was playing, and Bucky’s always everyone’s first pick.

So the third day he goes to bed, and he doesn’t cry, because he isn’t a kid, he’s not a _baby_ , but if it’s maybe kind of close, at least no one is there to see him. It’s hot, that night, real hot. He can’t sleep in his sheets because he feels like his whole body is turning to liquid. His hair mats against the back of his head, and every time he turns over, it gets worse. It feels a little like he’s breathing through a straw underwater, and on nights like tonight, it’s easy to wonder how long it can really last.

He ignores the tap on his window the first two times, and then twice more, until he hears, high and petulant, “Steve, don’t be mad at me, _please_. Open the window, Stevie!”

He scrambles to the window so fast he stubs his toe against the end of his bed, but it doesn’t even _matter_. Bucky’s here.

He’s sitting on the fire-escape that he’s not allowed to climb, that neither are allowed to climb, and he’s sucking on an ice-cube and sticking it through the hole in his teeth and crossing his eyes to make Steve smile, but Steve’s already smiling.

Bucky, with a little difficulty, swallows his ice-cube and continues with his apology. “I really didn’t mean for us to get in trouble, honest! I didn’t, okay? I didn’t really think, okay? Don’t be mad?”

“I’m not mad,” Steve mumbles, and smiles a little wider. “It was still dumb.”

“But you’re okay, right?” Bucky asks doubtfully, glancing down Steve like he’ll be able to see any bruises or breaks in the half-dark.

“I’m alright,” Steve says, “just hot.”

“Here, turn around,” Bucky says, and Steve should know by that smile that something’s up. But he does it anyway, and when the first half-melted chunk of ice slips its way down his thin nightshirt and slips down across his spine, he yelps fit to wake the neighborhood and jump-dances away, squirming to get it out.

“ _Bucky,_ ” he squeals, but Bucky’s in hysterics, squealing on the fire-escape with his legs slung over the side, ready to make his escape.

“You’re too easy, Rogers,” he crows, and for him, Steve thinks, he’ll probably always be.

•

They spend the last few days of the week like that, Bucky sneaking in Steve’s window, Steve feeling only a little bit guilty for lying to his mother about it. But his mother isn’t home, sometimes, so he tells himself that it isn’t _really_ lying.

Besides, it’s Bucky who’s breaking the rules. And so it continues.

Bucky brings comic books, sometimes, and they read them at five, when it’s still a little bright outside, pressed up against the window frame, Steve inside, Bucky out. When it’s the second week, and Steve can’t get all the way out of bed because of the way he’s shaking in fever, Bucky rubs down his limbs, tries to hold him together before he rattles apart.

“I heard if you stay still, you’ll get better faster,” he grunts, sitting on Steve’s bony little knees. Those days, he reads the comic books and shows Steve the pictures and does voices for the characters. Steve’s favorites are the villains. Bucky goes all raspy and creepy and it makes him feel like bugs are crawling up under his bedclothes, and if they shriek in laughter, it’s alright, because by the time Steve’s mama comes in, he’s back on his mattress, blinking like he was having a bad dream.

(If his mama smiles, sometimes, like she knows better, they’re both good enough at pretending the two boys haven’t been caught. Still, when she gives him two cookies instead of one, he wonders.)

“I think I’d be a really great spy,” Bucky says thoughtfully, cookie crumbs smeared around his mouth like souvenirs of an evening well spent. “I’m sneaky, right, Steve?”

“I guess,” Steve says, but he adds, “You’re not very good at fooling me.”

“I don’t need to be,” Bucky throws back, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “We’d always be on the same side, doofus.”


	7. The 'I'm Actually Human Trash' Update

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god i'm so sorry it's been a month i'm so so rr y

The car jerks and shudders and when Sam swerves again, the knife digs in deeper and scrapes itself a long, jagged groove down the middle of the car.

 

“Pull over,” Steve yells, already pressing at the window’s controls.

 

Bucky thinks that he should know better. He should _be_ better. Most of the blood has been scrubbed, with dirty water and sheaf after sheaf of paper towel, from his arm, but he still remembers the sensation that came with crushing a window and a skull in one smooth, rehearsed downward motion—how easy it was to toss the agent from the craft.

 

He knows things that, sometimes, a dim, private part of himself wishes he didn’t, but it’s too late. He knows how to vary the movements of his Arm to allow for coagulation. Still, he cannot say as much to the Captain, to Steve, so when he looks concerned, the soldier only smiles.

 

James—Bucky—smiles.

 

It seems like the least he can do. A small kindness extended for one who is too kind.

 

Another kindness is dealing with whoever is clinging to their roof. He evaluates. He reconsiders. He believes, with a soldier’s belief, that it’s the least he can do, so with his right hand, he pins Captain America in place by his wrist, and with his left, he levers himself up and through the window, sending out a kick on his way up that collides with something soft and yielding.

 

“Oh my god,” he hears, and “Pull over,” and “Wait, that _knife_ —”

 

Red hair.

 

“James.”

 

“Natalia,” he answers, in an accent he doesn’t recognize, and then before the car stops, the panic gets him, and he’s blacking out, sliding over the hood of the car without extending the effort necessary to catch himself.

 

The pain the asphalt brings is a comfort.

* * *

 

It’s different, in the dark. The dark brings memories like chocolate, melting across the roof of his brain and sticking him to them, thick and suffocating and sweet.

 

“Bucky,” a high, reedy voice says, shrill, with little breath. “Bucky, _stop_.” It takes him too long to realize it’s laughter that makes the voice sound like that, that makes the boy—because it must be a boy—sound like he’s dying.

 

“Bucky, let _go_!”

 

“Not until you give up,” the soldier whispers, as Bucky yells it, howling with laughter of his own.

 

The visual kicks in here: there’s light, and a small, Spartan bedroom, and two boys on the floor, colorful pages strewn around them, the bigger one sitting on the other, tickling him ferociously and laughing when he tries to throw him off.

 

“You’re—you’re such a _jerk_ ,” the smaller one wheezes. There are tears on his face. He wants to reach forward to wipe them away. It’s a strange, foreign desire—and he knows that they are tears from his laughter, from the exertion, tears of joy—but the desire comes from something deeper than he’s ever felt, and he fears that if he reaches forward, it will find him, and he will choke on it.

 

The bigger boy pulls the blond one up, eventually. Dusts off his back, and snorts at it, and says, “Your cleaning skills need work, Rogers.”

 

“It’ll get plenty, the next time I dust the floor with you, Barnes,” Steve throws back, and he’s so _small_ compared to Bucky, bird-boned and a little duck footed, but he says it like he means it, like he _could_ , with a spark in his eye that looks a little like a fever, and Bucky laughs when the memory of him laughs, he feels the same burst of affection, of amusement, the sensation of rolling his eyes.

 

And then the black is back.

 

But here, it’s different.

 

The sensation he remembers is not warmth, not sun in a little room in a big, sprawling city.

 

It feels underground. It feels like winter.

 

A woman with hair like warm blood on fresh snow sweeps his feet out from under him and steps back, waiting, waiting for something from him.

 

The words that come from his throat are harsh and congratulatory, and he can’t see the relief on her face, but he knows that it’s there.

 

He calls her Natalia. She calls him James.

 

The snow keeps falling. Here, it’s always falling.

 

He doesn’t like this memory. He doesn’t want it. He wants the warmth back, wants air that doesn’t smell like chemicals and iron and gun oil. He wants the warmth _back_.

 

He doesn’t get it. He gets a burst of ice across his back, his front, his face. His hand, even, as he raises it towards the little window, towards a reflection he doesn’t know, ice splintering its way through every vein, every nerve ending, until everything is dark and he doesn’t feel the cold, because he doesn’t feel anything.

 

* * *

            Natasha comes down like the day after Christmas: too quiet, too quick, and enough of a surprise that Steve wishes, however briefly, that she’d go back to wherever she came from and let them find the highway.

            With Natasha comes the threat of discovery. The promise of violence. And, if Sam’s breathy little, “Hey, Agent Romanoff,” is anything to go by, an unnecessary crush.

            “Boys,” Natasha says primly, before she breaks into a small, brittle smile. “Tried stopping by yours, Rogers. Wasn’t much of a welcome.”

            _You weren’t actually invited_ , Steve sighs. In his head. To her face, he says, “I’ll have to work on that,” but her smile goes a little wicked, like she heard that other thing, too.

            Even after jumping onto a moving vehicle—out of the sky or off another car, Steve isn’t sure—she still looks impeccable, her hair falling back smoothly on either side of her face, her makeup untouched. The only thing that gives her away is the dirty smudge across her middle, roughly in the shape of a boot print.

           

            Steve slams the door a little harder than he should. Bucky’s immobile on the ground, his metal arm trapped beneath Natasha’s black-shoed heel, his other twisted up uncomfortably beneath him, his bare upper arms scattered with marks, blood at his elbow and the crest of both shoulders.

            One lip is a quarter to split. His teeth, when he opens his mouth, will be bloody.

            Steve drops to his knees down next to him, evening out his limbs and checking for breaks with the pads of his fingers.

            “How hard did you clock him?” he asks Natasha, for something to say that isn’t _I’m so tired of this_ or thinking about how terrible he is at keeping Bucky safe.

            “I didn’t,” she shrugs. “I said his name, he said mine, and—” She clicks her fingers. “He switched off.”

            “How did he even know your name?” Sam asks, and answers, to himself, “Internet? You are all over now, right?”

            “Maybe,” Natasha says, but it’s shifty again, and Steve snaps before he can help it.

            “If there’s something we should know, Natasha, feel free to share it. if not, get out of the way so that we can at least _try_ to get him back in the car.”

 

            “ _Alright_ ,” she says, and the tone of her voice sounds like she’d be raising her hands, if Steve looked over at her. He doesn’t bother. She steps off of Bucky and onto asphalt, and that’s all he can care about right now (And he knows he’s not being fair, knows he’s lashing out because he can, because she’s a valid target, because Bucky’s on the ground and bleeding _again_ , but he can’t be fair, right now. Not now).

 

            “I said, ‘Hello James.’ He called me Natalia. He nosedived. That enough for you, Cap?” She pops her lips on the _p_. He can feel her smirking at him.

            He turns to look at her. If he just looks at the way she’s standing, how high she’s holding her chin, the hands on her hips, the heavy smirk, he can miss the quiver of nerves growing bright and anxious behind her eyes.

            He doesn’t miss it.

            “Natalia,” Steve says slowly. Natasha’s face doesn’t change. “That wasn’t in the file.”

            “Maybe,” she says, barely moving her lips, “it’s missing a few pages.”

           

            Bucky, below him, goes tense, and then he’s flipping onto his feet, his expression wild. Sam jumps in for damage control immediately, holding his hands high and open, his voice steady.

            “Your name is Bucky Barnes, you’re with us, we aren’t HYDRA, and we aren’t taking you there. All those aches and bruises you’re feeling are because you just fell off of a car. _Off_ of, not out of, because you were on top of it. Breathe a little, buddy.”

            Whatever he says back is sharp and Russian and directed past them. Sam and Steve look to where he’s glaring.

            Natasha’s lips are a straight, unmoving line, and she doesn’t blink. They wait.

            “Back in the car,” she says after a moment, and repeats it in Russian, if the hesitant step forward Bucky makes is any indication. “I’ll catch you up on the way.”

* * *

“The Red Room,” Steve repeats, like he can’t believe it. Bucky isn’t sure  _why_ . He knows what he is, he can guess what he has been.

 

It took the better part of an hour for the Russian to fade out of the forefront of his language centers; even now, his brain thinks in an echo return, English to Russian to back again, harsher on every repeat.

 

“You knew the Russians worked on him,” Natasha says curtly, nodding towards him. The memories of this one are red-drenched, red silk, red all over. That’s all he gets, when he thinks about her: color and sensation and a little bit of fear. But there’s comfort there, too, or the half-remembered sensations of it. Once, they were comrades—friends—comrades—family. They were something.

 

Still, when she looks at him, there’s only a blank mask of a face, and a smile, when the other two are looking. He tries to ignore it.

 

“I didn’t think—I forget how—” Steve breaks off with a low growl, slamming his hands against the dashboard.

 

“You forgot how long,” Natasha fills in, tipping her head slightly in Bucky’s direction. “You can’t. It might make you uncomfortable—”

 

“That’s not what I’d call it,” he bites out, but she talks over him.

 

“But you need to remember all of it, because that’s all a part of the— _person_ you’ve got.”

 

“It didn’t matter to me,” Bucky says, and everyone but Sam turns towards him, as if surprised he’s remembered to speak. “Who it was, who the scientists were, what country they represented. If I was theirs—”

 

“Don’t,” Steve says tightly. “Please.”

 

Bucky shrugs, and falls silent. If he doesn’t want to hear it, he can’t be forced, but Bucky thinks about it, for a moment. He was supposed to be loyal to his country, and so he was, but the country could have been any, the cause could have been any, and he would have followed it to completion, termination, or execution. He would have done terrible things. He had.

 

Red blood and red hair, splayed across snow. A red star on a white bandage. A red sign on a silver arm. Less important, maybe, than surviving. Than orders.

 

* * *

 

He says _theirs_ , like he belonged to them, like he was a weapon. And he was. He _was_ a weapon. He was a _weapon_.

 

Steve says it to himself as Sam drives, again and again and again, and it doesn’t stick. It doesn’t take. His brain refuses it.

 

His brain thinks _Bucky_ , and it’s a scream, it’s a smile, it’s a soldier, it’s a blue jacket and a stupid haircut and a round of drinks and it doesn’t make _sense_ for all of that to boil down to _weapon_.

 

Steve takes a breath. Beside him, Sam shoots him a glance, his eyebrows raised, eyes wide. _Do you need a break_?

But they can’t stop, not now. They’ve committed to something.

 

There’s a muffled sort of grunt from the back seat, and they both look towards it, and Sam’s the first one who laughs.

 

Bucky is asleep on a scowling Natasha’s shoulder, his head barely brushing her, but his neck lolling closer.

 

It’s almost, Steve thinks, cute. In a weird, ex-co-assassins sort of way.

 

“I’ll hit him,” Natasha threatens.

 

Steve grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, pals and strangers! I'm very very extremely entirely sorry this took several weeks to post, and solemnly swear to do my level best to endeavor to post both regularly and, uh, longer than this ended up being. 
> 
> As far as excuses go, mine's traveling, very many places, with very little wifi in between. Things got hectic, and now things are less hectic, and I am happily back! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, anyway! And thanks especially to anyone continuing to read, after my lengthy and ridiculous absence. 
> 
> As ever, I can be found [this way](http://spontaneousfangasm.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


	8. когда-то в россии

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (warning for a panic attack this chapter! just in case.)

“But he shot you,” Steve says, and Natasha shrugs.

 

They’ve made good time, and the motel they’re shooting for isn’t far, now. Sam’s pulling them in a circle towards it, just in case they’ve got a tail to shake. It’s nice, quiet and a little peaceful, with trees branching up on either side of the highway every few minutes. Bucky, in the back, is rigid and upright again, even though he’s still most of the way to asleep. And Natasha is _mostly_ answering questions.

 

“He was a different person,” she tells him as they turn off onto another side-road. “I didn’t think it could be the same man. I left for a mission. I came back three months later. He was gone. He never came back. In that program, life expectancy wasn’t exactly in the triple digits.”

 

“The metal arm didn’t give him away?” Sam asks, glancing at her in the rearview.

 

She meets his eye. Hers are steely, and unforgiving: it’s the sort of look that reminds Steve of what she is, what she has been. “It’s not the first thing I noticed. And the last time I saw him, I was practically a child. Black Widow was the title they gave me. Winter Soldier was his. We weren’t the only ones, and we weren’t going to be the last.”

 

She slouches against the seat again, and Steve watches Sam relax when she breaks eye contact, even though the corners of his mouth stay hard and lined, tensed up like he’s preparing himself for something.

 

“He was covered up,” she says, a few moments later. “I couldn’t make out anything distinguishable about him. Only the way he fought.”

 

“And how’s that?” Steve asks, even though he can guess.

 

“A lot like me.”

* * *

 

The women in the streets sound terrified. She thinks, if she were any other girl, she would be terrified, too. But her captain has given her new ballet shoes, shredded just the way she likes them, with a little blue handled knife, and smiled at her when he said, _You shall be the best they’ve seen_. She thinks, if she were any other girl, she would miss the threat in that statement.

 

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t miss the threat, and so when she walks by the women outside of the ballet, she nods to them, to hear the gossiping stop, to see their eyes widen. They know what she is, or they can guess; she doesn’t walk like a ballerina. This isn’t a performer’s confidence. This is something lethal. Still: she smiles at them, nods, and after a moment receives a few tentative smiles back.

 

It’s later, when the music is rising, that she sees him. A flash of silver catches her eyes in the middle of a leap, but she still lands it, poses, toes into her next steps without taking her eye off of it for a moment. She _is_ the best they’ve ever seen. The whole theatre’s eyes are on her. She dances.

 

The music crescendos so swiftly, so suddenly, that nobody else sees the head fall forward—the seat is the third from the front, in the middle of the row, and nobody notices. Nobody notices the man die.

 

Natasha smiles into her applause.

 

She doesn’t meet the soldier who does it until a week later.

 

* * *

 

Bucky wakes as they pull up to the motel parking lot, and, for a moment, he thinks he might be making all of it up. It’s not a delusion, and it isn’t anything that sticks, but it’s just enough that, as Sam throws the car into park and the engine goes silent, it’s very… well. A brave blond knight, pulling him from prison to castle, protecting—or, maybe, looking for—his virtue. It’s a fairytale.  

 

But then the car jerks forward, a little bit, when Sam pulls up the parking brake, and his head falls forward quickly enough that he notices the crick in it, and Natasha says, “ _Jesus_.” He’s not positive, but he’s pretty sure there’s no blaspheming in fairytales.

 

(A wide, purple book on bony little knees, flickering by candlelight, the pictures gleaming when he turns the pages.)

 

The memory comes and goes, half a wisp, but it’s not strong enough to muddle him, and, when he opens his eyes, he’s left with that little, wistful feeling, and it’s calming, somehow.

 

“Sorry,” Sam says, but he doesn’t sound it.

 

“Liar,” Steve says back.

 

There’s something gnawing at him, not quite pain and not quite comfort. Bucky can’t place it, but it twists its way deeper into him when Steve glances back at him and his smile fades into concern, into a careful little frown.

 

“Should we check in all at once? Or would you rather—Sam and I could just—”

 

“I _have_ checked into motels before,” Bucky tells him, a little bitter, though he doesn’t mean to be. “Hotels, too. Once or twice an airplane.”

 

Sam snorts. “Metal detectors must be a cake-walk.”

 

Bucky shrugs. “I tended to fly private.”

 

Sam grins at him. It makes him feel a little better. “Then let’s go,” he says, and it takes a second, but Bucky smiles back.

 

+

 

They’ve got two rooms, connected by a bathroom, four beds all together. Bucky goes into Steve’s room after him, closing the door with the back of his boot.

“First shower,” Steve yells towards the bathroom.

When Natasha calls back, “What happened to ladies first?” Steve rolls his eyes in Bucky’s direction, and Bucky smiles automatically. Which—huh.

 

Their beds are only a foot and a half away from each other, and Bucky’s a little surprised when, instead of sitting to face him, Steve mirrors his position, sat at the foot of his bed, facing the wall.

“New York,” he says. Bucky blinks.

“Tourist season,” he says, slowly, not sure what Steve’s looking for. “Decent amount of civilians, high population makes for…” Steve is looking at him. He trails off. “What about New York?”

“It’s where I was going to go,” he says softly. “Figured that might’ve been our best bet, if you were looking for yourself like we were. How are your bandages?”

If he keeps going like this, Bucky’ll end up with a headache. “They’re fine,” he says shortly. “Didn’t tear anything open. I heal quick.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re better yet.”

“I’ve had worse,” he says, and as soon as he does, he knows he shouldn’t have. Steve flinches and turns away from him, his face shuttering into something so pained and so unnecessary that he’s moving towards him before he figures out how to make his body stop.

He does, though. He has to, one arm, flesh and blood, dropping back down into a relaxed position, and the other, ticking and whirring, opening its fingers towards Steve.

 

“Terrible things have happened,” he says. “I’ve done some of them. Some of them have happened to me. Some of them have happened because of me. A few bullets in my back aren’t much, in the long run.” They don’t matter, Bucky knows, because he didn’t die. And if he isn’t dead, there’s still—not the _mission_ , anymore, he supposes, but _something_. A direction to go. A purpose.

But Steve is shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Buck. I’ve just never been good at seeing you hurt.”

“Things change,” Bucky says curtly. “The world goes on.”

Steve huffs out half a laugh. “You sound like Natasha.”

 

(A slight, red-haired girl twirls around at the corner of his vision. Her muscles bunch in preparation for a leap.)

 

He hums in response and tugs his shirt over his head, feeling, as inconspicuously as he can, for the holes in his back.

“You could probably sleep in the other room,” he says casually, his fingers dry against the bandages. Good. He hadn’t been sure, really, that nothing had opened again. It’s been a long day. “If this is uncomfortable for you.”

 

It is, and it’s plain as day, the way Steve is around him. Everything is fidgeting and sad looks and so much guilt that sometimes Bucky feels like he’ll suffocate himself on all of it. He’s surprised, that Steve’s picked this room, not handed him off to Natasha, who seems more than capable and much less trusting.

 

“Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at the assassin. “Guess I drew the straw."

_No_. Bucky shakes his head. “You picked it.”

Steve is quiet for a moment, and Bucky stays still under his scrutiny, looking back at him with the shirt still stretched out over his arms, his shoulders and back bare.

“I did,” he says, finally, and turns down to his bag.

 

“Why?”

 

The silence goes on for so long that he can hear the cicadas starting up out back. Still, he waits. Steve will talk, or he won’t. He isn’t tired. He can sit here all night.

“I owe it to you,” Steve tries first, and Bucky thinks that the snort that comes from him comes from a _different him_ , the him that Steve knew, because Steve snaps his head around towards him and narrows his eyes. “I _do_.”

 “Bullshit,” Bucky tells him.

Steve drops to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, all long legs and long arms, jangling around until he settles again, knees up to his chest and looking up at Bucky again, face pensive and arms tucked close.

 

“I don’t have a reason for you,” he says this time, and Bucky believes him. He’s too earnest. He chalks it down to another reason Steve deserves someone else to protect him. Another reason he should be dead already. “But seeing you, on that bridge, it was… There was nothing else I could do. That’s all there is to it.”

 

“That still isn’t a reason,” Bucky says, but when the sad-eyes come back, he throws a pillow—lightly, with his real arm—at Steve, and walks over to the bathroom door and knocks, twice.

 

“If you’re done eavesdropping,” he says. “I’m very bloody.”

 

He doesn’t look back at Steve, and he takes his turn in the bathroom. His own guilt comes back in flashes, and tends to stick around. He can’t carry Steve’s, too. He closes his eyes under the water, and tries to lose himself in that, in the repetition of the droplets, in the dull ache at his back.

* * *

 As soon as the shower turns on, Steve is out the door, opening it carefully and tapping at Sam and Natasha’s with the flat of his hand.

Sam opens the door immediately, quickly enough that Steve wonders if he’s been waiting at the door, for this.

“That sounded kind of heavy, man,” is all he says, and Steve nods, and waits, for a moment, out of words. He can see Natasha eyeing them, from inside, pretending that she isn’t and paging through a battered-looking accordion folder. He knows she won’t come any closer, not unless he motions her forward. He appreciates that. One audience at a time.

“He’s asking why I’ve,” Steve tries. “He doesn’t understand that,” he stumbles. “I don’t know how to make him _get_ it.”

“He won’t,” Sam says easily, shrugging one shoulder. “Steve, he’s—I get it. I get that you’re trying to save him. But you need to figure out who you’re trying to save.”

The worst part is, Steve understands him immediately. Understands that the Bucky that comes out might not be the Bucky he wants.

As soon as he thinks it, he’s scowling to himself, shaking his head and stepping away from Sam.

“No,” he says, half to himself, and then, “No,” again, louder. “It doesn’t matter how he comes out. If I’ve—if I’ve gotten him out, it’s enough.”

“Is it?” Sam asks, eyeing him shrewdly.

“It has to be,” he says roughly, and then his weight is up against his and Bucky’s door and his breath is coming a little too tightly, a little too quickly. It feels like an asthma attack. These lungs _shouldn’t_ , can’t, he knows that they’re as close to indestructible as a person can get.

“Breathe,” Sam says, his voice steady and his hand, on Steve’s shoulder, as tight as his chest feels. “Find something to focus on, focus on it, and _breathe_ , Steve.”

 

“I’m—trying—I’m trying, I’m trying—”

 

The door flies open before he can steady his feet beneath him, and he falls backwards, wet hair that isn’t his falling into his face.

 

“What is this?” Bucky demands, the arm across Steve’s chest metal and gleaming and he can’t _breathe— The air isn’t coming, Steve, what do I do, where’s your ma? Steve? Steve?!_ — “What’s wrong with him?” Bucky sounds like he’s panicking.

 

_I’m okay, Bucky, I’m alright, I jus’ need a minute, I’m—_

_Steve!_

 

He’s laid out on the carpet, Bucky’s hands at his jaw, his neck, feeling his pulse, pressing against his chest as if he’s prepping for compressions, and Steve tries to swallow.

 

“I’m okay, Bucky, I’m—”

“You’re _not_ ,” Bucky growls back. Sam, behind him, is watching them with a pinched expression, his hand gripping against the bone at Steve’s ankle. “Your ma’ll have my hide if you—” He stumbles on the words and shakes his head, quickly. “What kind of super-soldier has a panic attack?” he says quickly, like, maybe, if he keeps going, Steve won’t have heard that first part.

 

Steve picks a point of focus. He grabs onto Bucky’s arm—his metal wrist, feels it flex against his hand, for a moment, before relaxing—and watches his hand against the metal, holding his breathe until he needs to inhale again, and doing it slowly, even as black bursts star across his vision.

 

“Good,” Sam says quietly, getting to his feet. “Good.”

 

“What does he need?” Bucky throws over his shoulder, and there isn’t a note of concern in his voice. It’s business-like, curt, like the answer only matters as much as its usefulness.

 

“You,” Sam says, and Steve looks up in time to see his eyes go heavenwards. “Obviously.”

 

“Sam,” Steve says, before he can leave. Sam pauses. “New York. We need to go to New York.”

 

“I know,” he says lightly. “But sleep some, first, alright?” He closes the door behind him.

 

Steve lets Bucky go like the afterthought that it is, and lets his head fall back against the carpeting. It’s plush in the sort of way that means that terrible things have happened on it, and he’s happy enough, really, that Bucky’s the one who’s showered already, and not him. He needs to wash his hair before he thinks too hard about it.

 

“Are you…” Bucky gestures across him. He’s still kneeling next to Steve, his hair dripping onto Steve’s t-shirt and his towel slipping down his hips.

 

“You don’t have any clothes,” Steve says, instead of trying to answer. “We can pick you up more stuff tomorrow. Until then, we’re close enough to the same size. Go ahead and grab anything.”

 

Bucky looks like he might call him on it. A part of Steve wants him to. _Dares_ him to.

But he only nods, and turns his face away, evening out his towel as he bends to pick up Steve’s suitcase, letting it fall open on the bed.

 

“You should really shower,” he says, when he’s picked out a simple gray t-shirt and a weathered pair of jeans. “You smell. And the carpet is filthy.”

 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Sorry.” And closes his eyes for one more moment.

 

+

 

That night, he dreams of Bucky, in a weird, roundabout sort of way. He’s in his towel, again, and his hair is wet, and his back is bleeding. Steve can hear more gunshots coming from outside, but it’s muffled when he pulls Bucky’s towel away, when he presses it to the wounds and Bucky smiles at him over his shoulder. He’s very naked, and his eyes are very bright, but even here, when he knows it’s in his head, Steve can’t let himself look anywhere but at his smile.

 

He wakes up with a knot in his throat, turned towards Bucky in the other bed. Bucky who’s sleeping in his clothes, straight as a board, face un-softened even in sleep.

 

He doesn’t go back under.

 

* * *

In the other room, Bucky’s awake first, but he’s quiet about it. Sam only notices because he’s awake in the other room, stretching out at the foot of his bed, his head brushing his knees when the tap in the bathroom goes on. Natasha’s gone out, her sheets military-straight already. The sun is rising; everyone else—i.e., Steve—will be up soon, he figures, so he doesn’t think about it too hard before he taps on the door.

 

“You alright?”

 

There’s no answer until the faucet turns off. “Morning.”

 

“Barely.” That doesn’t get a laugh, but after a moment, the bathroom door on his side opens, and Bucky’s leaning up against the door frame with one foot forward and what looks close to a smile on his face.

 

“Steve still out?” Sam asks after a moment, the silence and the Winter Solder’s—ex-Winter Soldier’s?—full attention a little hard to carry.

 

But he shakes his head. “I don’t think he slept well. His bed was made by the time I got up.”

 

“Hooray for team insomnia,” Sam snorts. “I’m glad you got your rest in, at least.”

 

“I don’t need much.”

 

Sam looks at him. He doesn’t look rested, but he looks prepared, and maybe that’s what he’s gotten used to. That doesn’t make it healthy, and it certainly doesn’t make it good for him.

 

“Yeah, but you know you’re—” Sam doesn’t have the words for this. He doesn’t know how to explain to him that there’s more to want than just basic necessities, even for them. Super-soldier or hyper-assassin or what _ever_.

 

Before he can break it down into something the soldier might listen to, Bucky straightens up, his eyes narrowing. “Steve’s back.”

 

“Right,” Sam says, “right.”

 

Five minutes later, they’re in Sam and Natasha’s room, a map unfolded across Sam’s bed when Natasha comes through the door, a tray of coffees in one hand and a plastic bag in the other.

 

“Food,” she says, dropping the bag on her bed, “and necessities.” She hands out the coffees one by one. When Bucky gets his, he stares at it for a moment, like he isn’t sure what to do with it, now that it’s in his hand.

 

“Yours is sweet,” she tells him, and then shrugs when they turn to look at her. “I’m not the one with memory issues. It’s the way he used to have it.”

 

Bucky nods to her, stiff and unsure. Steve’s jaw goes very, very tight. Sam glances between the two of them and takes a long, slow sip of his own coffee.

 

“Thanks,” he tells Natasha, when it doesn’t seem like anyone else is going to say anything. It startles Steve out of whatever the hell’s going on in his head, anyway, and he says the same, the tops of his ears going red. Sam snorts. When Steve looks over at him, he only raises his eyebrows, and hopes that says enough. From the way the flush spreads, he thinks it does. He’ll pull him aside later.

 

“If I’d been looking for you,” Steve says, looking at the map and not up at Bucky, “I’d have gone this way.” He traces a line from D.C. to Brooklyn. “You’d—I—I’d have assumed, if you were trying to figure out your… history. You would’ve gone to the start.“

 

Natasha hums out her dissent. “If I’d been a part of _any_ of that, I would’ve asked you why you assumed he’d be going to the beginning, forward, and not from most recent, back.” She waves a hand at her head. “That’s the way memory works, right? Short term is clearest. You’d think that’d be the easiest for him to access, to retrieve as reliable intel.”

 

Behind them, Bucky’s eyes have glazed over. He fiddles with the hem of his shirt, his metal arm going through what Sam assumes are basic exercises, every finger curling forward, and then back in, through the hand and back, twice, three times before Sam clears his throat.

 

“We might not want to talk about Barnes like he isn’t actually here,” he offers, and both Steve and Natasha turn their glares from each other to him. He raises his hands. “For example: James? Would you have left any sort of trail for us to follow?”

 

It’s a little heart-rending to see the way Bucky jumps at his name, but Sam refuses to acknowledge it—only waits, to see where they go from there.

 

And he shakes his head. “If I was trying to get away from HYDRA, and trying to find the two—or three—of you, that would be a stupid thing to do.” He shakes his head again, and looks straight at an unwavering Natasha, the barest hint of a smile changing the way his mouth shapes the words. “I don’t like your plan. I’ve seen the notes. On me. About the way they cleared things. There wouldn’t be much left by way of short term memory.”

 

Natasha jumps at the opening. “What else do you know about what they did to you?”

 

“Why?” Bucky asks, his face just as expressionless as hers is, just as guarded. “Are we swapping stories?”

 

Sam hadn’t realized, until that point, how much Natasha moved, until she froze there, her eyes on Bucky and her face still. She doesn’t blink. He isn’t sure she’s breathing. He’s suddenly very, very sure of how dangerous she is. It’s not a good feeling.

 

“You know all my stories,” she says finally, voice soft. “You’ve just forgotten them.”

 

She doesn’t slam the door when she leaves, and she doesn’t take anything but her coffee with her. She’s quick and she’s quiet and Sam thinks that that’s maybe the worst part of it.

 

* * *

Her captain calls her the pride of the Bolshoi, his _zvezda moya_ , but he doesn’t tell her who the man in the rafters was, and so she relies on herself to find out. He forgets, of course, that she’s the Black Widow, and that in the compound she is feared. So she slips around, spends more time in the snow outside than she would, usually, after a mission.

 

She finds him, finally, sparring. He’s quick and gleaming. He walks like an American and swears like a Russian. His arm sometimes goes stiff from the cold. She watches one of his sparring partners attempt to take advantage of that, and watches how he jabs, twice, with his other hand, and blood spurts from their mouth. She thinks she might have very much to learn from him.

 

And so a week later, when his last sparring partner falls to the ground, she drops down in front of him, ties up her hair, and stands at the ready, her arms loose and nimble before her.

He narrows his eyes at her. “Ballerina.”

“Not today,” she says, and spins a kick at his face. He blocks it. She smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are beyond appreciated! They are the fuel on this fire, so thank you so much. I hope you're all enjoying this so far :)  
> And a massive dose of thanks to [rainnecassidy](http://rainnecassidy.tumblr.com). Thank you for listening to me whine and rail and thank you for preventing me from going full throttle on the angst factor. Look! It's only, like, thirty percent!


	9. The Bagels Are Abandoned

 

“I’ll go after her,” Sam says into the quiet that follows Natasha’s departure. He doesn’t wait for either of them to answer before the door is slamming behind him, too, although it seems like it’s more out of carelessness than anger.

 

“She was important to me,” Bucky says, as soon as the dust settles. Steve doesn’t have a word for the knot that sets itself into the middle of his stomach.

“Important how?”

“I don’t—I don’t _know_.” Bucky growls low in the back of his throat, his hands curling into fists at his sides as he shakes his head. “I don’t know anything.”

 

“You’ll get there,” Steve says quickly. He doesn’t even have to think about it.

 

Bucky’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s what everyone seems to think. I’m not so sure, but I guess I don’t count, do I?”

“Buck—”

“I’m half a person. I’m not quite who you think I should be, and I don’t know enough to fill in the gaps.” He shrugs helplessly. “I’m not enough.”

 

He doesn’t know what to say to that, and before he can think of something, anything—like _you are enough_ , or _you will be_ , or, god, _I believe in you_ —Bucky’s moving away and closing a door between them.

 

“Bucky,” he says, too late.

 

“Bandages,” Bucky says, through the door, and Steve thinks about how that’s what he’s supposed to be, holding all of Bucky’s pieces together, but all he can feel is all the blood seeping through him, all of it Bucky’s, all of it lost.

 

He rolls up the maps in rough, jerking motions, stuffing all of their belongings away and tidying up the room behind them. Not enough. Steve grits his teeth, scowling deeper when he accidentally tears one of the sheets between his hands. _Not enough?_ He’d said it like it was his fault, like he was supposed to be able to bounce back from this. Like _Steve’s_ expectations were too low, and not like his were too high, impossibly high.

Steve slams out of that room, Sam’s bag over his shoulder, and into his and Bucky’s, through the front door.

“You know,” he says loudly, struggling to keep his voice even, “this isn’t the first time we’ve shared a room, but it is the neatest I’ve ever seen you keep your side.”

There isn’t any indication, on the other side of the bathroom door, that Bucky’s listening, so he keeps going, anyway, and hopes for something, and tries not to hate it.

“You were always such a slob, and I hated it. Every time you’d stay over, when we were kids, you’d leave a mess behind, and when we were older, and living together, it was always _your_ clothes I was tripping over, your junk that made it hard to get through the bedroom.”

The door creaks open, slightly. Steve ignores it, yanking the sheets on Bucky’s bed a little loser. There’s something about the perfect, straight edges that-- even in the military, it was always Bucky’s bed that was a little messier than the rest of theirs. He doesn’t want to look at this.

“You were a terrible roommate. You never did your dishes until days after they started to smell, so I usually ended up taking care of it. I was home more, anyway.”

He rolls Bucky’s dirty clothes-- _his_ clothes that Bucky dirtied-- up into a little, neat package and tosses it onto the top of his suitcase.

“Every time we argued, that always came up, and you’d call me a nag, and worse than a housewife, and other really horrible, mean-spirited things, and I’d call you out on the slob you always would be, and yell at you about how unlucky anyone who ever got hitched to you would be.”

The bathroom door is open, now, and Bucky’s looking at him, his eyes wide and bemused, and Steve is full of such horrible, undirected anger that he’s a little afraid to do anything more than glance at him. The bed he drops his weight onto, then, is Bucky’s, and he doesn’t look to him for permission. He isn’t trying to be delicate, he isn’t walking on eggshells. Bucky’s still just as stubborn as he’s ever been, and he supposes he should be thankful about that, or, at the very least, relieved.

 

He wants him to yell back.

 

“I don’t remember that,” he says.

“So _what_?” Steve picks up a roll of bandages from the floor and squeezes it in his hand, watching the way his knuckles flex. “What are you missing? Years in an crappy apartment with a boy who spent two hundred days of the year wheezing and the other one hundred and sixty five getting you into trouble?”

 

Bucky shrugs, moving over to Steve’s bed to perch on it, turned towards him. “It’s history.”

“Exactly,” Steve mutters. “So maybe it should stay there.” But Bucky’s already shaking his head, inching himself closer across the mattress, until their knees are almost touching.

“Not memories. _History_. That’s what they took from me, Steve.” He shrugs. “And either I win, and I get it all back, or they win, and my history is whatever they say it is.”

Steve’s head snaps up to look at him so quickly, he sees stars. “What _they_ say it is? Don’t listen to them!” He laughs. It sounds empty even to his own ears. “I’m right here. I was there for so much of it.”

“And I’m trusting you,” Bucky says quietly. “But that still puts me in someone else’s power.”

 _I’m trusting you_. As in he trusts him _now_. As in he isn’t sure how long he can trust him, or how far down the line. Steve closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” _I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I didn’t save you._

“So what?” Bucky says back to him, and Steve almost chokes. But when he looks up at him, Bucky’s eyes are glittering with laughter, and his cheeks are twisted into little arcs with how hard he’s trying not to smile. “I’m-- Steve, I’m getting clearer and clearer. Not-- not memories, not all the time, but I’m starting to feel like someone who _should_ have them.” He looks away, and Steve wants to reach out, wants to catch his jaw to get him to look at him again, to see him smile. Bucky isn’t smiling now. His mouth is pursed tight, and his metal hand rubs against the back of his neck in a little nervous tic.

“Thank you,” he says quickly, and Steve gets it-- this is embarrassment. The thought makes him smile. “I’m... susceptible, like this.” When he looks back up, he’s scowling. “I tell you too much.”

“I’m--”

“A friend,” Bucky says, and he sounds a little exasperated. “I remember.”

Steve grins. “I was going to say, ‘I’m not in a position to use it against you,’ considering the fact that we’re running from the same people.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Smartass.”

 

Right there, Steve wants to put his hands on him, draw him into a hug hard enough that all of this feels a little more real, a little more like it’s happening and it’s good, but he doesn’t know what Bucky will do. So he compromises; it’s a hand on Bucky’s knee, and a quick squeeze, when he doesn’t leap away.

 

“Not a smartass,” Steve says. Bucky stares back at him. He isn’t sure he’s breathing. Steve smiles. “That always was your job.”

“Guess I’ve got some time to make up for.” It sounds almost like a question.

“You planning on being insufferable, Barnes?”

Bucky’s grin is slow and unfurls like a flag on the wind, strong and slow. “Aye aye, Captain.”

 

* * *

 

Sam finds Natasha on top of the car. Her legs are crossed, her face tilted up to the sun, and she doesn’t flinch when he slings himself up onto the trunk, leaning his head back on his arms.

It’s nice, here. Peaceful. No one else seems to be up yet, and the motel grounds are quiet. Their car is the only one in the row, tucked underneath a skinny, shadeless tree.

 

“Short term memory, huh?” he says casually, tipping his head to glance back at her. “You would’ve had us go through DC, then, what, Russia? Really?”

He knows what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth, but he has to hear her say it. Natasha's too smart to have missed all the big, bright, blinking signs in the file she slipped Steve that indicated all the reasons her plan of action wouldn't fly. Too smart, and too proud about it. 

“I lied,” she sighs, after a moment, and Sam shrugs. _Duh_. He thinks he might see her smile. “I just wanted to see if it would get him to react.”

“He definitely did that.”

“Yeah, well.” She falls quiet. Sam doesn’t want to press. He’d seen her face; there’s something about all of this that makes Natasha volatile, and he doesn’t want to push that any further than it’s already been pushed. It isn’t fair. He gets that. He stays quiet, and waits, just in case. She clears her throat.

 

“If he regains his memory, all of that… everything that he remembers about the Red Room. About me.” She lets out another huff of hot air. Her hair jumps up at the updraft. “He’ll be the only person alive who knows that much about me.”

That doesn’t mesh. “What about that whole media dump? Didn’t you kind of out all your secrets already?”

She’s shaking her head before he’s finished. “Missions. Reports on my illegal and barely-legal activities. Everything I did in someone else’s name. But that isn’t _me_.”

There’s something about the way she stresses that that makes Sam want to pay more attention, to let her at least feel like someone’s listening, even if it doesn’t make quite as much sense to him as she’s obviously shooting for. She makes a frustrated noise at the back of her throat.“Everything before who I am. Everything that made me. He’ll have all of that.”

 _Oh_. 

"You mean you _before_ you were you," Sam says slowly. She doesn't look at him, but he gets it. Her history. The parts that hadn’t been tainted yet, maybe. Sam makes a noise he doesn’t mean to make, and he can see the look she shoots him out of the corner of his eye. She isn’t asking for pity, it’s not in her nature, but the rush of sympathy he gets for and because of her makes him pause.

“That’s too much for you?”

“That should be too much for anybody.”

“Knowing who you are?”

“Knowing who I was.”

 

He leans all the way up to turn to look at her. When she turns her face towards him, her hair falls on either side of it, red and bright and perfectly straight, even after a night in a cheap motel with no hair products in sight. He can’t help the smile that starts, and can’t help the way it grows when she rolls her eyes at him.

“Tell me you brought the bagels with you,” she says abruptly, spinning around to plant the tips of her shoes on either side of his hips.

“I didn’t even know there were bagels in there,” he tells her. “Too busy trying to stop a disaster in progress.”

“Rude.”

“Hey.” She looks at him. It might be, he’s realizing, the most honest he’s ever seen her, the smile not quite reaching her eyes, and her not trying to pretend it is. She’s just waiting, and open, and empty, and he wants to do something about that, say something to fix that, even though he knows he’d never be able to. He wants to try. “Someone knowing who you were won’t change who you are, right now. For better, or for worse.”

She smirks at him. “That supposed to help me, counselor?”

He cuffs her lightly on the shin and her smirk turns into a smile. “This is what I get for trying to boost your ego.”

“It’s already the biggest thing about me.”

Sam snorts out a laugh, and Natasha mock-scowls back at him, swinging her legs into the air. “I could still kick your ass, Wilson.”

 

“Trust me, he’s aware.”

 

They look up. Steve’s at the door to Sam and Natasha’s room, both rooms’ keys hanging from one hand and the bag of food in the other. Bucky’s got the other bags in his arms, and Natasha slides off the trunk and flips it open without looking at him. Sam sighs. It was peaceful, there, for a second. Oh, well.

 

“I am _very_ aware,” he says, smiling back at Steve. “We’re half an hour from Baltimore, maybe forty minutes if we wanna weave around a little bit.”

 

“Yes,” Bucky says, before climbing into the back seat.

 

Sam looks at Steve. “Was that an answer to something I missed?”

 

Steve shrugs, a little helplessly. “Yes to the weaving. Just in case. And then I think we should go straight on to the safehouse in New York.”

 

“Sure thing. And when you say safehouse…?”

Steve grimaces, tugging at the doorknob. “So you know Tony Stark?”

“Do I—Steve, I am a grown man with a TV, a Stark Phone, and a broken set of wings that did not, in fact, design themselves.” And Sam can feel his eyes getting really, really wide but that’s not all that important right now. “Steve. Steve. Are we going to meet Tony Stark?”

Steve looks like, despite his best intentions, he’s about to laugh. “No good getting all that excited. We don’t know if he’ll actually see us yet.”

“New York,” Sam says quickly, opening his door and sliding behind the wheel. “I can do that. I can do that _right now_.”

“Not too quickly,” Natasha says sharply. “I don’t care how much of a fanboy you are, you’re not getting us caught because you’re a little to eager to mingle with an egomaniac.”

“Believe me when I say I can focus and be reasonably excited at the same time, Romanoff.”

Bucky says something quiet from the back, and Natasha’s face twists up. Sam sobers quickly, glancing between the two of them in the mirror. “What?”

“He, uh. He just—”

He says it again, or a variant, his voice low and amused. It’s probably Russian. And Natasha—Natasha _laughs_ , her eyes wide like it’s surprised her, the sound and the smile that follows.

Sam sighs. “He’s insulting me.” He starts the car and pulls out onto the highway. “The least you could do is do it in English, man.”

“Doesn’t translate,” Bucky says, but he looks pleased with himself, and when Sam catches his eye in the rearview, they’re the brightest he’s seen them yet.

So he doesn’t have it in him, really, to begrudge him that. Even if it’s a totally reasonable amount of excitement he was showing. Completely acceptable.

“Are we forgetting who broke the wings in the first place?”

“Sorry,” Bucky says, and then he narrows his eyes. “Again.”

Sam snorts. “At least your memory’s working.”

 

+

 

It’s not until they’re pulling out that he sees it.

It’s big, hulking across the side of the motel’s office building, the red paint wet and shining in the early morning sunlight. The sixth arm is smudged a little bit, like whoever was doing the dirty work had to get out of the area in a hurry.

It might just be unfortunate graffiti. The motel they stayed in for one night might not have been tagged by the shadow organization that they’re running from. There’s a chance, right? Only, Sam’s not so keen on believing in coincidences. He’s scanning the parking lot as they roll towards the exit, but there’s nothing to see. Nothing more sketchy than empty cars and a blinking neon sign.

Sam switches on the radio, something loud and a little abrasive. When he glances up, he can see Bucky scowling in the back; Natasha, against the other door, shoots Sam a look.

“Steve,” Sam says quietly, trying to keep his voice light. “We’re gonna do a little more weaving than we planned on.”

Steve goes tense beside him, on high alert. “Where should I be looking?” he murmurs.

Sam raises the volume a little bit. The bass makes his hands shake on the steering wheel. “Nowhere. I’ve just got a feeling.”

“How bad?”

Sam shakes his head tightly, trying to smile. “Could be worse, could be better. Hey,” he says, a little louder. There’s not much point; the assassins in the back are already paying attention. “We’re a little outside of Baltimore, and Barnes needs to go shopping. How about we hit up a mall or two, stretch our legs?”

Natasha blinks at him. “Are we supposed to pretend we can’t hear you two?”

“Yes,” Sam says shortly, and changes the subject, subtlety be damned. “What other supplies do we need to pick up?”

Natasha blinks again, her mouth slightly open.

It’s Bucky who speaks up. “More food?”

Sam’s a little relieved, to be honest. He can deal with this. It’s almost like they’re a team. He smiles at Bucky and it might be more of a grimace than a smile, but he gets something back.

“Sure thing, soldier.”

 

* * *

 

The thing about Barnes is that Natasha doesn’t actively have to acknowledge his presence. She doesn’t have to engage him any further than she has already. Laughing at his stupid joke was a bad idea, and one she knows better than to repeat. A part of her wants to, the more curious part, the part that remembers the rivots left in fresh snow by a pair of boots on a body dragged away, and how quickly new snow covered them up.

She doesn’t tell Sam about the last time she saw the Soldier. She doesn’t tell him how messy it was, when she tried to find out what happened and they tried to stress to her how important it was that she let it go.

The lessons she learned from that were important. They were these: that bones set to heal, and that friends don’t come back.

 

“извините,” she hears, from beside her, and she closes her eyes. _I’m sorry._

“I don’t care." Her mother tongue feels a little strange, now, and she’s a little too conscious of the boys up front, silent and pretending they’re not dying to listen. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I upset you.”

“I pushed.”

“I don’t want you to--”

“What? Be upset? Compromise your chances?” She turns to glare at him, narrowing her eyes when he draws away, his eyes turned front, unwavering.

Sam’s little trick with the music works two-fold, because just as his and Steve’s muttered conversations are hard to hear, so is this. And she knows how sharp the Winter Soldier’s hearing is; she also knows how to whisper so that he’s the only one who hears it. It helps, a little, that they’re speaking in Russian, because it makes her feel like all her words are wearing a mask, even as hers slips.

“You might not remember this, but you will: we don’t make friends. People like us don’t get the sort of second chances you’ve just been handed. So don’t waste it. But don’t get too close to me.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“And I won’t,”  she tells him. He doesn’t look disappointed, only a little thoughtful, and a little frustrated.

“You won’t help me.”

“Why else would I be here? Idiot,” she mutters, sliding a little lower in her seat, a little closer to the middle. He stills when her arm almost brushes his.

“Then you don’t want to.”

“You know nothing about me, James.”

“That’s not true, though. Is it?”

Natasha finds herself against the other door so quickly, he might as well have pushed her away himself.

“Change the station. This is drivel,” she says, and Sam glances at her in the mirror. She smiles at him. He smiles back. He doesn’t know a thing, and he’s smiling at her like that doesn’t matter, but it does, and besides her, the Winter Soldier is drumming the fingers of his good hand against the window to the beat of a pointless pop song.

Sam changes the station to another local top forty, and the song that was on four minutes ago is playing again.

“So who,” Sam sings out over the chorus, “wants to tell me something about Tony Stark?”

There’s a muffled sort of sigh from the other side of the seat. Natasha can guess what HYDRA’s ex-asset knows about Tony Stark: his price-tag, his business partners, his projects with the highest potential benefit to HYDRA as a whole.

“He’s obnoxious,” she says, because she knows the other side of this. The part where people are _people_ again, not cost-benefit transactions and charts on a wall. “Loud. Short. And you’ve seen Stark Tower, Wilson. He’s a little short on taste.”

“Basically, Natasha’s second guessing your taste right about now, Sam,” Steve says, shooting her a quick smile over his shoulder.

That isn't what Natasha's doing at all.

“Forgive me for being excited to meet the man who let me fly. You think a lot of other dumb geniuses are lining up to fit wings onto a couple of hot-headed PJs?”

His mouth twists a little on the word _couple_. It’s the reminder that Natasha needs: that when people lose someone, they’re lost for good. No do overs. No repeats.

And then she looks up at Steve, who’s managing, again, to break all the rules.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” she tells Sam. “And we might want a backup,” she says to Steve, leaning forward to brace her elbows on both of their seats. “I wouldn’t blame Stark for not wanting a HYDRA basket-case in his living room. I can make a call.”

The look Steve shoots her is a little chilly, but she didn’t expect any different. “A call to who?”

 

+

 

Fury answers the phone with, “What is it _this_ time?”

“Barnes is in recovery,” Natasha tells him. Nick’s on the bluetooth speaker, and a wave of static starts up when he sighs. Bucky winces.

“ _And_?”

“Wilson wants us to go straight to Stark, but--”

“The answer is yes, Romanoff. Now stop calling this number. When I said I was burning everything--”

“Got it, sir.” There’s another sigh. Natasha tries and fails to fight back a smile. “About that ‘yes...’”

“ _Yes,_ we have a safe house, _yes,_ it will be ready for you,   _yes,_ I will send you the location, _yes_ , I am hanging up now.”

“Nice chat. Sir.”

“ _Sir_. Even from across the country you’re making my hypertension act up.”

“Don’t you wanna say goodbye to the boys, Fury?”

“Goodbye, boys,” Nick says.

“Do svidaniya,” Bucky says.

“Who--”

Natasha hangs up the phone.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update tomorrow!


	10. Is It A Good Thing That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally lied about the contents of that last chapter on the [tumblr post](http://spontaneousfangasm.tumblr.com/tagged/stucky%20fic) about it, so, here, have another!

 

Townson Town is full of people and Bucky bends his back and lowers his head like he’s afraid that if they see him, he’ll lose something important. It breaks Steve’s heart, a little bit, but, lately, it seems like everything does, so he ignores it, and taps at the brim of Bucky’s dirty baseball cap that, effectively, appeared out of nowhere. The jacket he’s thrown on hides his arm; it’s an interesting look.

“Very subtle, I like it.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, but he grins at Steve from underneath it. “This place is full of cameras. The circuit feeds route to four different comm posts, and I can’t get to any of them without injuring someone, or several people. I know that, but I don’t know when the last time I was in a mall is. Excuse me if I’ve forgotten the dress code.”

Sam whistles from behind them, clapping his hand onto Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky flinches, but he doesn’t move away, and settles into it after a moment when Sam says, “Someone’s feeling awfully chatty.”

It’s light, and it’s easy, and Steve’s not entirely sure that they deserve this, yet. Bucky looks more nervous than someone who could take out half the mall should be able to, and it--

Steve takes a breath.

“Where to first, Buck?” he asks, putting his hand on Bucky’s other shoulder. Bucky doesn’t flinch from him. His elbow taps Steve lightly against his ribs.

“All I need’s a couple shirts with sleeves. Not picky.”

“That rules out so many stores,” Natasha deadpans.

 

Walking into the first store and setting off the anti-theft detectors kind of rules out the rest.

 

+

 

“I _really_ don’t mind,” Steve says again, and Bucky growls out something in Russian that he doesn’t understand, again, and Sam and Natasha have only been gone for twenty minutes.

“It’s not like you could’ve known,” he says reasonably. “I doubt HYDRA had you breaking into top secret department store facilities.”

“Steve,” Bucky says tightly. “I’ve broken into some of the most _heavily guarded locations_ on the _planet_.” He looks up at Steve, his eyes wide and a little red. “There were children in there, staring at me. _Children_ managed to walk in undetected. _I_ set off an alarm system.”

 

The last time Steve saw Bucky this embarrassed, he’d torn the seat of his pants trying to impress an English girl by jumping over a creek bed. Now, he’s red and splotchy around his eyes (and Steve had been there, when the girl, coy as anything, had promised to show him _exactly_ how much she didn’t mind that ‘little rip,’ remembered how Bucky’s mouth had dropped open and his ears had gone redder), and a part of him wants to see if he can’t make that blush go further.

“I think a couple people upstairs were looking down at us when I dragged you out of there,” Steve says casually. Bucky goes pink to the neck and yanks off his baseball cap, chucking it to the floor of the car. It would be mean to laugh. Steve shouldn’t.

“I heard a teenager ask his friend what the hobo did to get kicked out,” he admits.

Steve _won’t_.

“They were talking about me.”

Steve does.

 

+

 

In ten minutes, they’re pulling up to another motel off the freeway, right outside of New Jersey state lines, with a new bag full of fresh clothes and a day’s delay, because, according to Natasha, “Everyone in that mall will remember your faces.”

Which is good, Steve figures. That Bucky has his own clothes. That he won’t be wearing Steve’s anymore. Steve’s, which are a little too wide in the shoulders. Steve’s, that-- that Steve shouldn’t be noticing the way they fit, quite so closely.

He doesn’t know how good it is, noticing something like that and being in such close quarters, with no on else to talk to, to distract him, and a day full of laughing together that feels too familiar, too soon.

“You’re very quiet,” Bucky says, when they’ve settled their bags. The rooms, this time, don’t connect; Steve would have to go outside to get Sam or Natasha’s attention. It’s a mark of trust, really; they’re a little less suspicious, now, that Bucky’s programming will find a way to see him dead in his sleep.

“Yeah, well. I’m a little tired.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve watches Bucky’s throat move when he swallows. He needs some air. He should go outside, walk around a little, until his blood stops rushing like this.

Of course Bucky walks across the space between their beds and sits at Steve’s side, slowly and carefully like he’s waiting for Steve to bolt. Of course he makes this difficult.

“I remembered something,” he says softly. “On the ride back.”

His flesh-and-bone arm is brushing up against Steve’s, and, god, he’s warm. It tickles, a little bit, against the hair of his arm.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. It’s, um. I told you that they’re quick. Small.”

“That’s still something. That’s still--”

“Shut up,” he says, exasperated, and Steve can’t help the grin that follows. “It’s getting better, is what I’m trying to say. It’s less... painful? Less harsh. Especially,” he adds quietly, glancing up at Steve from under his lashes, “the ones with you in them.”

“Um,” Steve says, drawing a blank.

Because he’s seen Bucky look like that. He’s seen it enough times before to know what it usually comes before. But-- he’s-- he know that that’s not. This. Whatever this is.

“You hurt yourself. I don’t know how, I just have that feeling-- a feeling like you’d just done something stupid and my heart was halfway out of my mouth.” Bucky’s lips curl down at the corner, and Steve tries to look at anything other than his lips, but Bucky’s eyes are dilated, the pupils swallowing the blue like it’s high tide, and nowhere Steve’s eyes land feels safe. “And so I fished you out of whatever it was and I think that’s what the memory was.”

“You getting me out of trouble?” Steve breathes.

“Me being cripplingly relieved that you were okay.” It shouldn’t be a surprise. It isn’t. It’s a mouth against the corner of his mouth, but the mouth is Bucky’s mouth, Bucky who’s been Bucky for less than a month, and his lips are soft and gentle and when he moves in again and hits his target full on, Steve is kissing back before he can stop himself.

Because he should stop himself.

Because he _ought to_ stop himself.

 

Bucky’s metal hand presses at the back of his neck, pulling him in deeper, and Bucky’s tongue brushes at the swell of his bottom lip, pressing against his own, too warm, and too much, and--

 

Steve pulls away.

He’s in the parking lot before his brain tunes back into itself, and when it does, he can feel everything. Four places Bucky’s metal fingers were pressing against at the nape of his neck. Dampness on his lip that didn’t come from him. How cold the asphalt is against his barefeet.

  
He brings a hand up against his lips. They’re stinging, a little bit. He isn’t sure if it’s because of the cold, or because of how much warmer it was inside, against Bucky, away from the mess inside of both of their heads. 


	11. The Way Things Used to Go...

Bucky goes after him.

 

They’re seventeen and the summer’s been a hot one, every day for the last seventeen days over ninety degrees, and only looking to get hotter. The air outside parts for them like a butter curtain, thick and unbreathable, and this time last summer, they spent their midnights skinny dipping in the nearest public swimming pool, running from the guards stark naked, with their clothes slung over their shoulders. This year, Bucky’s grown three inches and Steve’s lungs have shrunk twice that, and he can’t run, anymore, at least until the air thins out.

           

Most nights, Bucky doesn’t mind.

 

This night, his words go harsh and ugly and cruelly accusing. Bucky doesn’t have a temper the way Steve’s pop used to have a temper, but sometimes, he snaps. And when he snaps, he says things he shouldn’t. And when he says things he shouldn’t, Steve gets this _look_ on his face, like he’d kill Bucky himself if it wouldn’t make his heart hurt that much more, and then he’s out on the street before Bucky can catch his sleeve, before he can apologize, before he even _wants_ to.

He’s _hot_. He’s _angry_. It’s not _fair_ , the things they miss out on because Steve’s—the way he constantly has to accommodate—the way he—

 

Thinking about the way he snapped at him gets him colder than an hour in front of their icebox, and comes onto him so quick his teeth snap together..

And so he goes after him. The way he always will.

He starts calling his name as soon as he reaches the street. The temperature is going up, the sun is going down, and the smell of Brooklyn in the summer is heavy and thick and a mix of too many bodies and too many fumes sits over the city like a bulky wool blanket.

He runs. His feet slap against the pavement as he takes a corner a little too quick, dodging around children and ducking under a slow-flying baseball.

“Sorry,” he gasps back to the kids, and gets a finger for his trouble. “Steve!”

 

It doesn’t get scary until, several minutes later, he still hasn’t found him. Then it’s just a slew of worst-case scenarios: he’s passed out in an alley somewhere. He’s been mugged.

 

An hour later, when he’s dragging his way back up to their apartment, he’s managed to convince himself that Steve’s lying dead in a ditch, somewhere, and it’s all his fault, and he’s probably going to hell for it on top of everything _else_ , and he never ever managed to tell him how he didn’t mean it, really. How he never means it. How Steve’s so much more than every minor inconvenience the world's thrown at them.

 

So when Steve stands up from their couch, demanding, “Where the hell have you been?” Bucky’s a little surprised. Not as surprised at Steve, though, who gets an armful of Bucky wrapped around him, sweaty and dusty and overheated.

 

“What the hell?” Steve grunts out.

“Shut up,” Bucky mutters back, because from here, he can feel Steve’s heart beating against him and he _hates him so much right now_. “Thought you were…”

He trails off. ‘Dead or dying’ sounds a little ridiculous, here, now, in their little apartment with Steve held up against him.

Steve pats him twice, stiffly, on the back.

“Sorry,” Bucky says into his hair. “I’m a dick.”

“Knew that when I moved in with you.”

“Yeah, but. You’re, you know. You shouldn’t.”

 

“I _shouldn’t_.” Steve yanks himself away from him, shoving Bucky away. “I shouldn’t? Bucky, I shouldn’t what? I didn’t sign up for _this_.” He’s pointing at his chest, at the way it moves a little funny, sometimes, when he’s breathing too hard. His face is very red. His eyes, when they meet Bucky’s are shining, and not in a good way. Not in a way that means happiness. He looks almost distraught. That wasn’t what Bucky _meant_.

“You shouldn’t have to run off like that,” he says quickly. “Not—Steve. None of that, none of what I said—”

“What, you didn’t mean it? Please,” he says bitterly, waving Bucky’s words away. “I already know I’m useless. No point in either of us lying about it.”

“Don’t you _dare_.”

 

His voice is loud enough that it startles the red from Steve’s face. He wonders how red his own face is. It’s in shame, and in anger, and in a strange, solid desperation to get Steve to _understand_ this. “I shouldn’t have said that, _any_ of it, because it isn’t true. And you _know_ you aren’t—it was just the heat! You know how it gets to my head. Steve,” he says, a little more desperately, because he’s turning away, and he can’t, yet, “ _please_.”

“It’s been a long day,” he says quietly, still not looking at him. “I should just turn in.”

 

“ _Asshole_ ,” Bucky bites out, because this is his fault. It’s _Steve'_ s fault that he walks the three paces it takes him to get around the coffee table and into Steve’s airspace. Into Steve’s airspace and over his mouth and—

Maybe it’s too angry to count as a kiss. A little too rushed.

 

It startles both of them, and Bucky draws back quick, the back of his left hand pressed to his mouth.

 

“Um,” he says, his voice a little too high, his breathing a little too loud. “Where do you. Actually. Go? Couldn’t, um. Couldn’t find you.”

“You ran in the wrong direction,” Steve says slowly. His ears are starting to go pink. His eyes are bright again, but this time, it’s with wonder. Bucky’s eyes feel very, very hot.

“You could’ve called out. If you saw me.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes.

 

He kisses Bucky back like a high-speed train, too quick, their teeth smacking together, once, before it settles, and he kisses him like he’s curious about it, like he’s feeling it out, and Bucky isn’t thinking about it because there’s no point, really. Because it’s happening, and maybe it’s been meaning to for a while, or maybe it’s an accident.

He waits for Steve to pull back.

It takes a while.

 

* * *

 

Sam is at their door as soon as Steve is out of it, and Bucky doesn’t have anything to say. The two of them catch him with the back of his metal hand against his mouth, and if he looks a little defensive—well. They can draw their own conclusions.

 

“He’s outside,” he says. “Parking lot. Didn’t hear his steps for much farther than that.”

 

Sam looks at Natasha in silent question; with one last glance at Bucky, he goes.

 

Natasha stays behind. That’s a surprise; it doesn’t seem like she’s comfortable with him, yet, much less that she likes him. But maybe this is for Steve. Maybe it’s to keep Bucky from distressing him further.

“I didn’t mean to upset him,” he tells her, and her face stays impassive.

He leans back onto his bed. Steve’s bed. Neither of theirs. The comforteor is an offwhite, lined with gold thread. The embroidery is rough against his old arm. He doesn’t mind. He’ll take sensation where he can get it.

 

“Then why did you?”

 

Natasha’s stepped into the room. He hadn’t noticed; he doesn’t bother looking at her now. He runs his hands over the comforter like he’s making a blanket-angel, marvels at how soft it is, how strange it is that he’s here, that he’s still here, that this might be real.

“An accident,” he tells her. It’s as good a word as any. “Why are you here?”

 

He’s not expecting her to get closer, and he’s certainly not expecting her to hop up onto the mattress with him, her legs crossed in front of her. He’s close enough that if he—

He takes a breath. Bucky breathes. In, out. Once of each. Holds it. He does not think of the ways he can kill her. He does not need to. He will not.

“I do it too,” she says softly, and he tries his damndest to keep his muscles relaxed. “It won’t go away, but there’s no reason for it to. Not really.” She taps the tip of her foot against his ribs. He looks up at her. She’s smiling.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

She rolls her eyes. “You can swing your right arm up, catch me under the jaw to send me over the side of the bed. Bring your other arm around, break my neck. You could strangle me with your legs. You could—”

He says, “Stop.” He can think of three quicker alternatives. He doesn’t want to, but he does. His brain does the work for him, without his consideration.

“Okay,” Natasha says, “but don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s what we were trained for.”

_We_. “When you knew me. Was I…?” Bucky. James. Barnes. Asset. Winter Soldier. Empty names, ice in between them. He wants to know who he was, with her. What he was like.

She’s quiet, for a long moment. He isn’t sure she’ll respond. Maybe he’s pushed to hard. Maybe she hates him for something deserving, but unremembered. Maybe even for something unremarkable, for him. He wishes he knew.

““You were the closest thing to kindness that I got, James,” she says quietly, finally. It’s only when she says _James_ that he realizes this is in Russian, that maybe all of it has been. In a language he knows well enough to fall into it like a well-worn chair. “Anything else you remember, don’t forget that.”

“Kindness,” he repeats, savoring the word. He wants to ask her how that matches up to _don’t get to close to me_. But he doesn’t want to push her away again. He’s too selfish for that. She was something, once, that meant enough to him that there’s a comfort in this, her, next to him.

 

* * *

 

Sam finds Steve at the end of the parking lot, pacing with his hands in his pockets, probably close to driving tracks through the asphalt.

“Excuse me, sir,” Sam calls out. “I’m a little worried. My friend ran off without saying anything to anybody. Have you seen him? About this tall? _Really_ blond. Fit. Pacing a whole in the parking lot?”

“I’m not _really_ blond,” Steve says, exasperatedly.

“So you _have_ seen him.” Sam smiles, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “You have anything you want to admit to me, then? Or are you good walking around like a lunatic in the middle of the street.” Steve huffs out a laugh, shrugging him off.

A moment later, any hint of a smile on his face is gone, and he sighs, wrapping his arms around himself.

“I’m, uh. Um.”

Sam knows what he wants to call this. Ridiculous, maybe denial. Period-typical attitudes towards all sorts of things. But Steve’s not exactly like anyone he’s ever spoken to, and he can’t think of a single way that would be fair, so he points towards an empty parking space and walks over to sit on the little cement median. Steve follows, dropping down next to him, and Sam jostles his shoulder into his, scooting down a little further before Steve can retaliate.

“He kissed me,” Steve says quietly, and Sam isn’t _surprised_ , but damn. That’s. Huh. Sam whistles.

“You feeling a little blindsided?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On what he remembers.”

 

Steve’s ears have gone a little red. Sam is trying very, very hard not to be thrilled about all of this.

“So you two were, what, sweethearts, way back in the day?”

“No,” Steve says quickly. “Not really. We just…” His face is full of question marks. It makes Sam laugh.

“Then what the hell are you running out here for, man?”

“Because a memory of a feeling isn’t a feeling,” Steve says, scowling down at his hands. Sam sobers up quickly, leaning in a little closer. “I don’t want him to feel like he has to… Like this is me trying to turn back the clock. Or worse, that he’s indebted to me, somehow.”

“Steve—”

“Besides, things are coming to him quicker, all sorts of things. He’s recovering from _so much_. I’m not getting in the way of that. He’s not in a place where he can just—just decide to—”

“Steve.”

“To do that! Out of nowhere!” Steve’s whole face has joined his ears, and his face looks torn between wonder and indignation, and he scowls at Sam when he struggles to keep back a laugh.

 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he says, holding up his hands. “Just—it’s been life or death, Steve, for the past few weeks. This is so…”

“Unimportant?” Steve asks in a small voice.

“So much of a relief,” Sam corrects, jostling up against Steve again. “Look, he’s important to you. Always has been. Whatever else, don’t forget that.”

“I wouldn’t,” he says, affronted.

“Then you’ll be fine.”

Steve’s smile takes a minute to get going, but once it’s there, it’s blinding.

Sam is, understandably, a little disappointed about the fact that it’s thirty seconds from disappearing.

            “Now about our little incident in the car, earlier.”

           

He was wrong; it only takes seven seconds for Steve to go straight-faced. “What was it?”

            “Graffiti,” Sam tells him. “Huge. All along the side of the building, a giant red HYDRA sign. Now don’t get me wrong, I know it could be a coincidence, what with all of the recent Internet traffic. But if it _was_ HYDRA—”

            “Then they might be right behind us.”

            “Not even,” Sam says, getting to his feet and offering Steve a hand up. “ _On top_ of us. And as much as I want you to work things out with your boy…”

 

            “Let’s do a round,” Steve suggests, taking his hand and jumping up, sprightly as ever. “Just canvass the area a little bit.”

            “Plan,” Sam agrees. He wishes, for a moment, that he had his gun on him, but this would have to do. They keep walking, it looks like an evening stroll, nothing surprising. They go back inside, come out armed? Too much of a heads up.

            Looking at Steve, though? There’s no one else he’d want at his side.

            Besides, maybe it is just a tagger. Some dumb, rebellious kid who thinks they’re indie-alternative, raising their middle finger to the American way. Sam can deal with that. Captain America can probably deal with one better.

            It’s probably nothing.

 

+

 

It isn’t a tagger.

 

* * *

  

“They’re taking a while,” Bucky says, apropos of nothing. They’ve been sitting in peaceful quiet, but Natasha is happy to hear his voice. It’s something about the way he slips into Russian without realizing it—and the way he Brooklyn-curves his a’s and o’s, slightly enough that she wonders if he notices, the way his past lives are coming through in pieces.

 

“Are you worried about them?” she asks.

“No,” he says. It’s another few minutes before he speaks again: “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Sitting with me. Not being…” His mouth curves into half a smile. She remembers the expression, even if he wouldn’t. She wonders if he ever looks in the mirror and wonders where certain lines have come from. The little scar over his lip. The darker patch right below his chin. She was there, for those. She remembers.

“And I’m sorry. About… everything, I suppose.”

“You shot me,” she tells him, and wonders if she should flash him the scar. She won’t tell him how proud she is of it. He squints up at her.

“How did you survive it?”

“ _Through_ me,” she corrects herself, grinning at him. “To get to my charge. Him, you killed.”

 

He goes quiet for a long moment, long enough for her to wonder if she’s pushed to far. He isn’t smiling anymore.

 

The thing is, she isn’t _upset_ about it. She’d seen the ghost, the elusive Winter Soldier—the one she’d assumed the Soviets or the Germans or whoever else had inherited the technology had made after her Winter Soldier had never come back. Had assumed he was the newest upgrade, someone impossibly _better_ than her old friend, to have survived so long, to keep the name a legend and the face invisible.

When he’d shot through her, she’d been impressed. It was practical. Not overly messy. She’d been surprised that he’d left her alive, but figured she would have done the same thing, in his place. No death for death’s own sake; that would take it from an assassination, a hit, a job, to a murder.

She’d worn it like a trophy, then. Encountered the legend and survived it. Lived to tell the tale.

It had impressed Nick, even while losing their consultant had not.

 

“You know,” he says casually, and Natasha’s heard stories about the voice this sounds like, about the smartass kid from Brooklyn that Steve was damn near in love with. She’s heard enough to know it sounds like trouble. He tips his head back to look at her. His mouth is pursed like he’s giving her a secret, but his eyes are sparkling, like he’s glad to. “The way these memories come, they’re spotty. There are things that I won’t ever remember, and things that I won’t be able to trust as true, even if they seem like memories.”

“I’m sorry?”

“What I’m trying to say is that there are some things I don’t need to remember. And some things that, even if they seem like a memory, don’t need to be held on to so tight.”

There isn’t a lump in her throat. When she swallows, it’s dehydration. When she looks away, it’s because the motel lamp, behind him, is just a little too bright.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m getting,” Sam pants, dodging a boot, “pretty good at hand-to-hand.”

“That’s goo—” He’s cut off by a fist to the mouth, and Sam would wince, if he had time for half a breath, but he doesn’t. There are three of them, decked out in black, more surveillance than attack, judging by the lack of heavy arms. They caught them around the back of the hotel, one of them holding a cigarette, the other with a poorly hidden canister of red paint under their arm.

It was the third who gave them away, staring at them a little too hard.

That, or the ski masks on the other two in eighty degree weather.

 

One of them—a woman, Sam thinks, lithe and quick—catches him in the arm with her elbow, and it goes dead to the wrist.

“Hail _HYDRA_ ,” she rasps out.

“Hell no,” Sam says back. It’s gonna be a long night.

 

* * *

 

            “I didn’t think it’d mess him up this bad,” Bucky says, settling up against his bed’s headboard, shuffling the pillows around his body to accommodate. Natasha migrates up next to him, tucking her knees up to her chest and letting her head rest against the wall.

            “It’s weird,” she agrees. From all she knows of Steve, he should’ve been back by now. He’d tolerated Tony for worse. “Maybe they went out somewhere.”

            Bucky snorts.

* * *

 

            “They’ll find you,” the biggest one spits from around his mask, “find you, and kill you like the traitors you are.”

            “ _Traitors_?” Sam _cannot believe_ any of this. All it’s been with them is vitriol and a weird sort of patriotism. “Do they do brainwashing for all of you? Sign up and get a voucher for it? ‘Thanks for your interest, here’s the mental laundry shoot?’ Because you’re all dumb as sh—”

            “Shut up,” Steve huffs, “and _hit him_.”

            Sam does.

            _Traitors_ , really? 

* * *

 

            “I picked out the blue one.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Thought it’d go nicely with your eyes.”

            The soldier isn’t sure he should be so comfortable, with Natasha, here, this close to him. He knows her reputation, knows her skillsets, admires her for it. But the part of him that’s Bucky is soothed, a little, but a warm body next to his. By soft-spoken conversation that isn’t to any tactical advantage. It’s… nice.

            “Has it got long sleeves?”

            “Yeah, but the fabric’s thin enough that it won’t be too much of a pain.”

            “Maybe I should look for gloves, too.”

            “Wouldn’t be a bad idea.” 

* * *

 

            “ _Steve_ , where’d the little one go?”

            “I thought you had her!”

            “I’m a _dude_ , you _assholes_.”

 

* * *

 

            There’s a thump at the wall behind them, hard enough that Bucky ducks on instinct. He’s surprised, when he looks behind their heads, that nothing has fallen.

            “Someone’s having a good night,” Natasha says, looking suitably impressed.

            “Someone’s going to be scrubbing plaster out of their hair for days,” he tells her. He remembers _that_ sensation, and there’s nothing nice about it. He’d felt the grit against his scalp for long after it had been washed free.

            But Natasha shrugs, shooting him a cheeky wink. “As long as it’s worth it.”

* * *

 

            Sam closes the door behind them, and sags up against it, battered, bruised, and exhausted as hell. Steve, beside him, doesn’t look much better, which is encouraging; if he’d been perfectly put together, Sam would’ve rioted.

            “Can we just,” he wheezes, “go to bed. Please. No more of this.”

            “Did we,” Steve bends over slightly, pressing a hand to his ribs. “Did we get any information from them?”

            “Just a lot of ‘eyes everywhere’ Big Brother shit.”

            Steve squints up at him, his breathing leveling out. “What about your Big Brother?”

            He pats Steve on the back, starting the long limp around the block. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

            “Shit,” Steve blurts out, standing straight up. “Bucky.”

            “No,” Sam whimpers. “No stress. I’m done. I’m so done. We’re going to bed. Nat’s in his room, she can sleep there. You can bunk with me.”

            “Won’t he—”

            “ _No_.”

 

* * *

            Natasha answers the door at first knock.

            Sam looks like he’s been through a tumble-dryer. There’s a little blood on his bottom lip, and the beginnings of a bruise around his left eye. The way he’s standing is favoring his right side. He holds up a hand before she can ask.

            “Room switch,” he says. “I’m sore, dirty, and annoyed. Talk tomorrow.”

 

            She closes the door and turns back to Bucky, who’s looking back at her calmly. “So.”

            He raises an eyebrow. She smiles.

            “Not a good night. Plenty of plaster.”

            Bucky sniffs. “At least Sam’s got short hair.”

           

* * *

 

            “Thank you.”

            It’s whispered across the beds at half-past midnight, and Steve isn’t sure Sam’s awake. Neither of them had gotten beat up too badly. Taking them by surprise had been a nice bit of luck, and from the way they left things, they’d have a head start tomorrow, and probably wouldn’t be followed.

            No broken bones. No bruises that a few good nights’ sleep wouldn’t heal.

            Steve feels a little guilty, all things told. His ribs are already feeling better, and his lip is tender, but not nearly as split as it was an hour ago.

            “ _Sam_ ,” he whispers again, a little louder.

            There’s a groan from Sam’s side of the room. Steve, ridiculously, finds himself stifling a laugh.

            “Thank you.”

            “Go to _sleep_.”

            “Sam, I—”

            “ _No_.” Sam flips over. Steve’s eyes trace the slope of his nose in the dark, outlines his profile. “I’m here, I hear you, but I need _sleep_. Not all of us are superhuman.”

            He turns a little more. Steve wonders if he can see his grin in the dark. From the sound of his snort, he must.

            “You’ve got me, man. I’m here to stay. Now I’d _like_ to go back to sleep, if that’s alright. _Cap_ tain.” He turns over grumbling, and drifts off a minute after, his breaths coming even and soft through the room. Steve doesn’t sleep much, but he knows he’ll up bright-eyed and warm, even now, with his face and chest aching, smiling up into the dark.


	12. With A Little Extra Practice

The not-just-a-tagger has left Sam with a bruised up cheekbone and Steve with the quickly fading imprint of a boot across his chin, speckling the space below his lip with yellow and purple.

 

Bucky’s hands are on it when they all meet outside of their motel room doors, early in the morning, skittering across warm skin and a soft, still-sleepy smile. Steve’s breath catches at the touch of skin on skin. He feels it on his fingers.

 

Bucky gives an exaggerated wince and a long, low whistle.

            “Close call?”

            “Not even,” Steve says, and the tension that was there when Bucky’s skin touched his is gone in an easy laugh. Bucky wants to laugh back. A part of him—a small, quiet part that the rest of him smothers—wants to press his lips to the bruises.

            The rest of him wishes he had been there. Wishes he’d been able to remind them what HYDRA meant, when he was in their holster.

            He settles for, “Sorry.”

            Steve huffs, pushing his hand away. “Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault. We managed to ask them why they were following us.”

 

            “ _You know what kind of reward we’d get, bringing Captain A in_?” Sam mocks, in a high, surprisingly flexible falsetto. “All alone, without SHIELD backing, or anything!”

            “And then Sam was all, ‘Why don’t you youngsters give it a shot?’”

            “I do _not_ sound like that.”

            “And so they did, and—”

            “And we left them tied up for housekeeping to deal with in the morning,” Sam finishes, he and Steve grinning at each other. Bucky snorts.

            “What time will they be taking out the trash?” Natasha asks, smirking.

 

            “Soon,” Steve says, his eyes snapping to her. “So we should probably get out of here. We’ve got a clean way ahead.”

            Bucky thinks that, in the correct way of going things, he should speak to Steve. Call whatever worries he has unfounded.

            He wonders if he’s expected to apologize. But he’s seen the way Steve looks at him. The way he still looks at him. He’s unsure if it’s memory, or something else, something for the new, damaged version of the old, dead friend he represents. He doesn’t know how to ask that, but he knows how Steve felt next to him, once, and he knows that he wants it now the way he wants it then.

            The memories he has, of them, the short flashes of light, and skin, and laughter, and sunshine. So many of them feel like secrets, like the moment that comes before guilt.

            He does not feel that. He’s glad about it.

            So there is only want, and the memory of want, and he isn’t sure where they intersect, and he isn’t sure what he can tell him about it.

            So he says, “Let’s get out of here, then,” and keeps his eyes on Steve when he slides into the back . And pretends he _doesn’t_ hear Sam clear his throat a little, and nudge Steve towards the back. And pretends he _doesn’t_ hear Natasha’s muffled snort.

            Steve’s still next to him, looking at him, wildly unaware.

            It’s something.

* * *

 

            It was when they were leaving the van, Natasha thinks, when she was bleeding and Sam was trying to make her smile, a bundle of cloth held against the wound.

            “So you’ve been matchmaking this whole time?”

            “Trying to.”

            “Maybe you haven’t got a handle on his type.”

            She’d squinted at him, a little hazy with bloodloss and the pain she felt every time she took a step. “He doesn’t talk much, if you haven’t noticed.”

            “He talks plenty to me,” he’d said, smiling down at her. “Bet you twenty bucks I could set him up with someone.”

            “And have it stick?” She’d grinned at him. “You’ve got a deal. I need a new pair of sunglasses.”

 

            She hadn’t realized how serious it had been. The odds of her _losing_ , but here, with those two in the back, and Sam being the one who, effectively, helped bring them together—and whose pep-talk had, presumably, been a little more couples-therapy-esque—

 

            “We don’t need to do too much weaving today,” Steve suggest from the back, and before anyone can argue, Bucky barks out a laugh.

            “You really think they haven’t reported back by now?”

            “Does it matter? We’re still far enough ahead that—”

            “I can’t believe you left them alive,” Bucky mutters. Mentally, Natasha’s on his side, but Steve? Sam? She can’t see either of them pulling a trigger after the fight’s been won.

            “Bucky…” Steve starts, and Natasha can almost hear him rolling his eyes from here.

            “Try not to forget that HYDRA tried to kill you.”

“I’m not forgetting! I’ve just got priorities.”

“Which are?”

“Well—”

“Because they _should_ be staying alive.”

"They didn't even see you! So it's not like they can report--" 

"They are trying. To  _kill_ you." 

“Goddammit,” Natasha mutters out loud. “I can’t believe I lost.”

“Lost what?” Sam asks, while Steve and Bucky bicker.

 

Instead of answering him, she digs into her pocket and passes over a neatly-creased twenty dollar bill. Sam glances from the money, to her, to the backseat.

“Oh my god,” he says, and then, “ _Oh_ my god,” a little louder, the smile on his face spreading wider. When he laughs, loud and full, Natasha scowls. “I didn’t even do it on _purpose_. This is—this is _great_. This is _so good_.” Objectively, she agrees. Personally, she’s a little outraged.

The backseat has gone silent.

“Guys?” Steve says, and Sam can’t quite answer because there are _tears_ in his eyes and Natasha _cannot believe_ that she lost.

“Don’t worry about it. Just keep… quarrelling.”

“We aren’t quarreling,” Bucky mutters. “Steve’s being dim.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Steve says, “is _prioritizing_ and _compartmentalizing_.”

“And _healing_ will come next, I’m assuming.”

“Healing from what?”

“From the next time you get _shot_ , asshole.”

 

Natasha. Cannot. Believe.

 

“You know,” Sam says coyly, glancing at her at the intersection. “I’d forgotten about our bet. You probably could’ve held onto this.”

“And what, have you remember in a year and nag my ear off?” Natasha smirks. She likes Sam. He’s fun. “No thanks.”

“We should probably split it, anyway,” he muses, turning left. “Or, actually, give it to James back there. He’s the one who did the finding.”

“You’re the one with the killer pep-talk.”

He looks over at her again, his smile curling his eyes into bright half-moons. “You’ll look killer as a bridesmaid.”

He jerks forward, and Natasha laughs. Steve, from behind them, draws his foot back. When she looks back at him, his face is cherry red. Bucky’s is expressionless, carefully impassive, and Natasha winks at him.

“Don’t worry, boys. You’ve got decades.”

“I love road trips,” Sam wheezes, pressing a hand to his ribs.

 

* * *

            They get to the safe house with time to spare. It’s tall, square, and modern, at the edge of a nondescript suburban neighborhood. A path of gray stones lead up to a glass-plated door; there are flowerpots on the porch.

 

Natasha goes in first, already unbuckled as the car pulls up the drive, slamming her door closed before it’s in park.

            “You think she’s stayed here before?” Sam asks, looking at Steve like he’ll have an answer to that. He shrugs.

            “No idea. But if there’s anyone I’d trust to take point…”

            Before they can leave the car, the garage slides open, silent and quick. Natasha walks out , blocking off the blue floor lights and grinning at them.

            “Come on in, boys,” she said, waving the car in. “The whole place is clear.”

 

            Sam starts up and pulls in. As soon as the engine’s off, the door closes behind them. Steve isn’t sure if it’s the blue light, or the abundance of seemingly unecessary metal gadgets _everywhere_ , but he’s got a pretty strong feeling that Stark had a hand in this. Natasha laughs before he can even ask, putting her hand on his shoulder to push him aside.

            “It’s Stark,” she says, laying her hand against one of the metal squares. “Romanoff, Natasha,” she says into the air, and another door opens, smaller than the garage door but not by much.

She looks at them, waiting.

“Wilson, Sam,” Sam says tentatively. A green bar on the wall glows brightly, and then shuts off. He steps closer to it.

“Rogers, Steven,” Steve says. The same bar lights up.

“Barnes, James,” Bucky says quietly, and it happens again.

There’s a near-missable ripple in the air across the entryway, and then Natasha’s bounding through it.

“Chemical security,” she calls behind her shoulder as they follow her in. “And now we’re entirely secure.”

“Great,” Steve says, and he’s almost surprised to find that he means it; there’s a weight lifted that he hadn’t been aware he was carrying, but now, here, in a small, simply-decorated house, with windows that are probably bulletproof and a kitchen that’s beeping a welcome to Natasha, he feels safer than he has in a long, long time. And it’s peaceful.

“So I was thinking,” Natasha says from the kitchen; the floor plan is open enough that she doesn’t have to shout. “We drop our stuff and head to Stark’s. This can be our base, it’ll work well for that, but if we’re on his turf we might as well make ourselves known.”

“Sounds fair,” Steve says, moving back towards the garage to deal with their bags. “Rooms?”

“You and Barnes upstairs, me and Sam down here.”

Sam coughs. It sounds a lot like the word _convenient_ , but when Steve shoots him a look, all he does is smile.

 

+

 

The rooms upstairs is clean, bright, and connected by a bathroom. Bucky knocks at the door between the rooms when Steve’s setting his bag at the foot of his bed.

“How does it measure up?” he asks, voice soft.

Steve doesn’t know if he means to his apartment in D.C., or the _really_ old apartment in Brooklyn that likely no longer exists. He shrugs.

“It’s alright. I like my neighbor.” Bucky’s shirt—one of the new ones, long-sleeved and light—is the same color as the sheets, a pale, dark blue. They both match his eyes.

“That’s good,” Bucky says, his mouth pursed to one side. “If I upset you, last night, I—” He breaks off there, staring hard at Steve.

He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do here. How he’s supposed to reassure him. What he wants from him.

Steve is suddenly, incomprehensibly worried for his own safety. But not from Bucky himself—from whatever he’ll say next.

Steve swallows.

“Sam gives great advice,” he blurts out, and immediately feels like putting his hand over his mouth. “I mean,” he says, trying to save himself, “He talks to people. In all sorts of—and I think it might help you, maybe? To have someone listen while you—and it might. It would help.”

 

Bucky’s eyes have narrowed to lizard-like slits, and Steve looks away, his face burning.

“Huh,” Bucky says, and then he’s closing the bathroom door, leaving Steve in his neat little room, the palms of his hands grinding into his eyes, trying to erase the last few moments from his mind—and trying to erase what those last few moments _could_ have been, and so very much _weren’t_.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky looks at himself. Bucky who is James, who is the Winter Soldier, who is an asset, a weapon, a person dead, a person alive.

He’s _so many things_ , and he finds, for the first time in a long time, he only wants to be one—only wants to be, not the person he was, but the person he is, grounded in time and place and _personhood_ , the way he hasn’t been for such a very long time.

But now he is. He has a place, and people who recognize him as human, and it should feel like enough.

The problem is Steve’s face, red, and his eyes, alarmed, are burned into the backs of his corneas, and when he blinks at himself, he sees the fear in his eyes. For what, Bucky isn’t sure, but he thinks it might be that he is not the person that Steve wanted, that Steve had before.

But Bucky is a magpie, and Steve is gleaming, and golden, and he wants him, and he is selfish. So he grins at his reflection with all of his teeth. He doesn’t remember being good, but he remembers being right, and this, whatever it is, will be _right_.

He lets the smile fall away.

He isn’t sure if he’s allowed, and there’s no one to ask for permission. Only Steve himself, bright and gleaming.

 

“God,” he says out loud. He wishes there was a way for him to ask the man he used to be. But he’s not here, Bucky muses, and never would be.

 

* * *

 

He’d told him to go to therapy. Something had almost happened and he’d told him to _get help_.

Jesus Christ. Bucky’s right. He’s dim. He’s dim, and useless, and his own biggest problem.

Steve groans, knocking his head against the bathroom door.

“Please don’t hate me for this,” he mutters against the wood.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky freezes.

Does he know that he’s in here? Is he trying to talk to himself? Should he pretend he didn’t hear anything?

“God, Bucky,” comes through, muffled, and, “I’m only trying to—god, I can’t even say ‘do the right thing,’ because I don’t think there’s much precedence for all of this.”

Bucky is doomed. _Doomed from the start_ , he thinks, and smiles, bewildered, because that feels like an old phrase, and it feels so appropriate he’s tempted to say it out loud.

He clears his throat.

“Steve?”

* * *

Steve freezes.

“Oh, god.”

* * *

 

Bucky throws open the door before he can run away again, and stares at him until he takes a step back, his eyes so wide his lashes are brushing against his eyebrows.

“I didn’t—I thought you’d—that you’d left, by now, or else I wouldn’t have—”

 

Bucky kisses him once, chaste and quick, and pulls away just as quickly, his tongue running across his lips, pretending, believing, that there might be a taste of him there.

Steve has gone red again.

“Uh,” he splutters.

“If you’re going to run again,” Bucky says, full of forced calm, forcing himself to relax, “you might as well run downstairs. I think Natasha wants to leave.”

 

He forces himself to turn around, forces himself to leave both bathroom doors open, forces himself down the stairs.

 

Forces himself, when he gets a look at the guilty look on Sam’s face and the smug half-smile on Natasha’s, not to give anything away. Only smiles, shrugs, and asks, “When are we leaving?” like the flesh-and-blood hand that he slips into his pocket isn’t twitching its way through the alphabet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update first thing (ish) tomorrow! Just gotta finish the proofing. :) Thanks for reading, y'all!


	13. Mr. Technology

Tony isn’t expecting them, so it’s a nice little turn of pace to be a part of a pleasant surprise. Well—

 

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Tony yells, falling off his stool when Natasha walks in first.

 

Mostly pleasant.

 

“Who let you in here? Who—Happy, is this your fault?” he asks the computer next to him. Happy’s face blinks back at them; Natasha waves. His mouth falls open.

“None of them have security clearance! None of th—”

 

Tony flips the screen closed.

 

“Well, that’s good,” he says lightly, turning to stand and face the group of them. “Thought I might’ve forgotten. Felt super guilty, for a second there. Right!” He raises both hands, forefingers pointed at Sam and Bucky. “Strange and Stranger. Pretty sure we haven’t met.”

“Sam, Bucky,” Sam says easily, pointing from himself to Bucky. Bucky, who hasn’t looked at Steve once in the ride over, and even managed to hold the front door open for him without making eye-contact. Bucky, who nods to Tony, and stays two feet away from Steve like his life depends on it.

“Tony,” Steve says, trying and failing to shrug it off. Tony looks happy to see him, at least. He clasps his hand and smiles at him when Steve says, “Sorry about the unannounced visit.”

 

“Not at all. I was thinking about calling in lunch. Everyone okay with sushi?”

“We’re here for your tech,” Natasha says, lightly amused. “Not your food.”

“I’m wounded,” Tony says, planting his hand over his heart. “But mostly hungry. And hey,” he adds, turning to the others and winking at Sam, who looks like he might be breathing a little quickly. “There’s no tech like Stark Tech.”

 

Sam turns to Steve as soon as Tony’s turned his back, calling for an aide. _No tech like Stark tech_ , he mouths, his eyes bright.

 

 _Nerd_ , Steve mouths back, and laughs when he scowls.

 

+

 

“Well,” Tony says, an hour and several platters of sushi later, “I, uh. Had no idea.”

 

Natasha shrugs, leaning back on the couch in his office. It’s the biggest office Steve’s been in yet, all bright lights and aggressively modern furniture. They’re walled in by windows.

 

“You didn’t hear about it because no one wanted to make a fuss.” She smirks at that. “I’m surprised you didn’t see anything about the explosions, though.”

“So many hours of work,” Tony sighs. “Thought we were working for the good guys.”

 

“We were,” Steve says firmly, because he knows where this trail of thought leads. He meets Tony’s eyes, then Natasha’s, and back again. “We did what we thought was right, for a cause we believed in. Don’t forget that.”

 

“That’s not always enough.” Bucky’s voice comes as a surprise; the content, less so. Steve glances over at him. He’s staring down at the glass table in front of them, tracing patterns on the transparent surface with his metal arm. Tony whistles.

 

“That’s a hell of a prosthetic. It is a prosthesis, right? Not just a cover-all?”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, his glare challenging when he looks up at Tony.

 

“It’s incredible,” Tony says plainly. “I’d love to—”

 

“Can we focus, please?” Steve says sharply. Bucky’s arm isn’t a _toy_. Leave it to Tony to try and make it into one. (He thinks the look Bucky shoot shim might be grateful; he doesn’t torture himself by looking back.)

“We need help, Tony,” he says. “Not firepower, or anything, but—”

 

“We can find them,” Tony says, and Steve believes him. Believes in how cocky he looks, getting to his feet and brushing off the front of his slacks. His grin looks almost dangerous, and Steve’s glad he’s got him on his side.

“Give me two hours. Hang out, put up your feet— Steve, walk with me for a minute, I’m sure your friend’s’ll keep.”

 

He walks out of the room without looking back to see if Steve’s following him. Steve sighs.

“I guess I’ll be right back.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, a little wistfully. Natasha kicks him in the thigh.

 

* * *

 

 

Tony’s got a little side office off his main one, a little bigger than a large closet, a little smaller than a room, nothing but two chairs, a drafting table and a tall lamp taking up the space. He points Steve towards one of the chairs and leans up against the table, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Cap, I appreciate the bare-bones catch-up, and totally understand that our time is limited, but did you actually bring the number one in stealth assassination into my office?”

“Yes,” Steve says. There isn’t much else _to_ say about it.

“Sorry,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Uh huh.” Tony peers at him, his arms going tighter across his chest. Steve tries not to squirm under the scrutiny.

“There’s something else,” Tony bursts out finally, his voice a little too loud in the small space. “There’s something else you aren’t telling me, in a really, really obvious way that makes me feel sort of like, if I knew it, everything would come together—”

“Sam flew an EXO-Falcon,” Steve says quickly.

“That’s not—EXO-Falcon?” Tony frowns. “What the hell is a— _oh_ , the EXO-7.” Tony gets a dreamy, quietly proud expression on his face, and it makes Steve smile.

“How’s it flying?”

Steve’s smile disappears as suddenly as it appeared.

“It’s not. Bucky kind of… wrecked it.”

“Right,” Tony says sharply, “while he was working for HYDRA. Which was just, what a week ago?”

“Yeah,” Steve says meekly.

“What was his name again?”

“Bucky.”

“Bucky….”

“Bucky Barnes.”

It takes Tony a minute. He goes through a slew of expressions—shock, for a moment, and anger, fear, confusion. It’s on bafflement that it settles, and he sags up against the table, jostling a few pencil stubs loose and to the floor.

 

“Well, shit,” he says, and Steve groans.

  

* * *

 

 

Steve comes back through the door pink-faced and flustered. It’s almost enough for Sam to worry about Bucky’s chances, but when Tony comes through a moment later, a thoughtful look on his face and his fingers flying across the keypad of his own Stark Phone, Sam worries about Steve, instead.

 

“You alright?” he asks, when Steve slouches back into the seat nearest him.

“Fine,” he mutters, and looks up at Sam to add, “He wants to ask you about the Falcon’s flight patterns, or something, later.”

A little thrill of excitement churns in his stomach.

“Yeah, I can—I mean, it’s sort of—yeah, could be, uh.” He clears his throat. “Could be fun.”

 

Natasha scoffs at him from the couch opposite and snatches a remote from the bottom of his chair, turning on something loud and flashy. “Keep making a fool of yourself, Wilson. It’s real cute.”

Sam’s skin goes from room-temperature to super solar in half a minute. Steve’s elbow knocks into his side and he bats him away, a little petulantly, sure, but it’s been a long week and he is _allowed_.

 

“He makes weapons, doesn’t he?”

Bucky’s leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring out into space with a singular sort of focus. Sam makes a decision—he’s not sure if it’s a good one, or a wise one—and puts his hand on Bucky’s knee. It does what he hoped it would do. It snaps him back, and Sam watches him take a grounding breath, glancing around at their surroundings.

“Used to,” Sam tells him, giving his knee a quick squeeze. “Now Stark Industries is more energy and defense than offense. My wings were a part of that—more useful for rescue than anything else.”

Bucky stares at him, his mouth twisted down on one side.

 

Sam wants him to take this as an example: once a weapon, not always a weapon. What once destroyed, now building, refashioning, saving.

“From the sound of things,” he says slowly, “it wasn’t easy, reshaping all of that. A lot of people had some very choice words about it. But Tony managed.” _And you can too_.

 

He leaves his hand there, just in case. Bucky doesn’t seem to notice.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing about all that data exploding across the internet is that there’s _so much_ for Tony to get his hands on. And he gets his hands on _all_ of it. Faces, names, burned aliases, possible liaisons, likely rendezvous points. It’s not hard to draw up a HYDRA-coded map of the U.S. The hard part is the next hour and a half: pinpointing hotspots, activities, and red zones of the half-dissolved mess that HYDRA’s become in the wake of SHIELD’s InSight kamikaze maiden voyage.

 

“JARVIS,” Tony calls, and another power screen lights up, one foot above him and slightly to the right. “Boil it down to the five hottest areas.”

 

There’s D.C., of course, but Hartford, Connecticut is lighting up like Vegas, and Staten Island doesn’t look much better. Tony zooms in on that part of the map. Great Kills. Wonderful. Besides that, it looks like safe-house town bases—Rising Sun, in Maryland, Berwyn in Pennsylvania, and—huh.

 

“Zoom in on number five, JARVIS.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The East Village is glowing like a supernova and for a moment Tony is thoroughly, entirely furious. And then he realizes something: it’s justified. It’s _beyond_ justified. Here he is, completely oblivious to HYDRA squatting in his backyard.

He’s _murderous_.

“JARVIS,” he orders, as calmly as he is able, “keep all of this running. I’m gonna go fetch Steve.”

“Breathe, sir,” JARVIS says, but the program keeps updating, occasional blips of light outlining new pathways, new trespasses, new erros in Tony’s on judgment.

He should’ve been paying attention. He should’ve—

“Sir, if I may remind you—HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD. You are only one man.”

Tony huffs out a poorly-held breath of air. “Just keep that going, JARVIS. Let’s give them all the help we can.”

He doesn’t say thanks, but his AI is more intelligence than manners. He gets it.

 

* * *

 

 

“STEVE,” Tony bellows, coming back into his office, but it’s Natasha who jumps up first.

“I should sit in on this,” she says. It’s almost like she can’t decide whether to ask permission or to give an order, but Steve waves her ahead anyway, and they disappear behind another door.

And Sam? Sam takes advantage of their absence.

 

He turns to Bucky, who’s staring at the TV screen, eyes glazed over, allowing the light and sound to wash over him like so much mist. Sam waves a hand in front of his face. He startles.

 

“Sorry,” Sam says, but he doesn’t mean it, and he’s grinning when Bucky looks over at him.

Bucky rolls his eyes.

“So, listen,” Sam starts, but Bucky cuts him off.

“Steve called you a good listener,” he says. “You’re a therapist.”

Sam isn’t sure how to respond to him. He’s not sure how to classify his tone of voice. Judgmental, skeptical, angry—any of those would mean Sam’s response would mean something different, something specific.

So he’s careful: “I worked down at the V.A. Mostly counseling people with PTSD, trying to get them back into the world around them.”

Bucky’s eyebrows raising is _definitely_ a sign of skepticism. “You think I have PTSD.”

“I think there’s a lot going on right now,” Sam tells him, “and I also think that, for your memories, the best way to get through some of those blocks up there, is to talk through them. I think it could help. Figured you liked me enough, I might as well offer.”

Bucky’s lips quirk in a half-smile, half-grimace.

“You offering to listen to me complaining?” Sam grins.

“I’m offering to help, asshole.”

 

Bucky laughs, but it’s quiet, and he looks thoughtful, his hair in his eyes and his bottom lip between his teeth. It’s a good sign; Sam would rather he think about it, consider it, than strike out at him, push him away before he can get a word in.

He doesn’t touch him, he doesn’t want to push it, but he does lean forward a little, enough to get his attention.

“I’m here,” he says, “whenever you need me. We’ve gotta get at some of those memories, man. And if we need to break through those roadblocks, well. Don’t let the little rental cars fool you. I used to drive a truck.”

That startles a laugh out of him.

“I imagined you in something electric.”

Sam doesn’t bother trying to deny it. “If it gets me there…”

 

The others come out to the two of them laughing, easy, Bucky with a lightness to him that Sam hadn’t seen yet, lounging against Tony’s overpriced seating with his arms out on either side of him, both of them stretched out along the back of the couch. It’s a good look for him, relaxed. He hasn’t got long to enjoy it, most likely, but Sam’s glad they have this, now, no matter how short-lived.

 

“Children,” Tony booms, striding out from the other room with Natasha and Steve behind him. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“We’ll need both,” Bucky says, a touch testily. Sam isn’t sure whether to be amused or appalled.

“What’s the good news?” he asks, and the full force of Tony’s smile is on him, sending the nerdiest parts of him straight up to high heaven.

 

“The good news is, I’ve got the three most-likely HYDRA hotspots. narrowed down to within a few blocks of each.”

“And the bad news?” Bucky asks quickly, before Sam gets a chance to celebrate the good out loud.

“That’s where you come in, RoboCop. I got Cap’s whole SparkNotes version of your identity crisis, but we’re gonna need whatever’s left up _there_ —“ He jabs a finger in the air, pointed at Bucky’s head. Bucky narrows his eyes—“To help us narrow down the search criteria. From the sound of things, you must’ve been there before. If we could get _anything_ —”

“Tony,” Steve says, voice low, a clear warning if Sam’s ever heard one. He watches Natasha reach out a hand to catch his arm.

“He’s right, Steve,” Bucky says, and it’s a surprise to everyone, the way he relaxes again, dropping himself down against the cushions. “Me and Sam are gonna work on that.”

He’s looking at Sam, a little guarded, like he’s waiting for a confirmation.

“Yeah,” Sam says slowly. “We’re in works.”

 

Tony looks between the two of them. Sam’s not sure if he’s more delighted or amazed that Tony’s exactly the way he imagined him, all intense, heavy energy and steam-rolling confidence. It’s the coolest thing Sam’s ever done, maybe, hanging out with Tony Stark. If it’s a step behind anything, that’s helping out Steve Rogers.

His _life_ right now. Unbelievable.

 

“I’m sending you to Banner,” Tony says, quick and loud and sudden, turning away from all four of them like he’s already decided.

“Why?” Natasha asks. Sam’s not too worried; if it hasn’t fazed her…

 

“Because he meditates,” Tony says primly. “He’s also,” he amends, dialing something into the screen above his desk, “got a degree in neuroscience. I only _practically_ have a degree in neuroscience.”

“What’s that mean?” Sam asks, fighting back a grin, “you only get halfway there?”

“Halfway through my thesis,” Tony says slyly. “Other things just kept coming up. Like awards and business contracts.”

 

Damn. Sam is in a weird kind of love.

 

“Done,” Tony says, after a few minutes. “Bruce is expecting you. Two floors down, first hallway on your right. And, Sam?”

“Yeah?” Sam’s on his feet; the others are moving towards the door. Tony’s eyes, when they catch his, are bright.

“Let’s see if I can’t get you back in the sky.”

“You mean—”

“Wings, kid. Not much of a Falcon if you can’t fly.”

 

A weird, very powerful kind of love.


	14. Two Floors Higher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank the NPR broadcast (whose title and writers and broadcasters I have entirely forgotten) that was talking about, at some point, neuroplasticity in rats. Is the science jargon? Almost entirely.

Bruce says, “What do you know about neuroplasticity?” and Bucky, on the farthest chair from his desk, curls impossibly further into himself, his face turned towards the bookshelf, then the wall, then the floor.

“Nothing,” Steve says, a little bit shortly. He only speaks because it doesn’t seem like anyone else is planning to answer.

 

Half an hour ago, Natasha had passed over a small, silver jump drive. Bruce had asked them to stay nearby, so they’d sat in his office while he’d paced around the perimeter of it, running back and forth from his computer to type something in, and alternately staring at Bucky and—well. Staring at Bucky.

 

Steve shouldn’t have brought him here. Not so quickly, not with nothing more than a few minutes’ warning. But the amount of hope in Bruce’s eyes is enough to think that, maybe, this isn’t such a bad idea. That maybe this is where they need to be.

“Neuroplasticity is, essentially, the flexibility of the brain,” Bruce says, eyes bright. “The brain isn’t static—that is, it doesn’t remain the same, physically. Memories, injuries, growth, disease, all of that can affect the form of the brain, which would, in turn, affect the contents.”

 

He drops down onto the floor in front of Bucky’s chair, his legs crossed in front of him. Bucky looks down at him, his eyes narrowed.

 

“Memory,” he says, carefully, “is a cellular construct. The brain puts together certain pathways, links, what have you, around and connecting them. The pulses they put through your brain effectively scrambled those links.”

 

Bucky’s crooked little smirk is maybe the saddest thing Steve has ever seen. “So there’s no hope for me.”

 

Bruce shakes his head. “Neuroplasticity is at its strongest in childhood. The brain’s shape and chemistry is constantly changing, and that only gets slower and slower as you grow up. Now, biologically, you’re in your mid-to-late twenties. Everything should be slowing down.”

 

“If there’s good news, you should probably get to it,” Natasha drawls from the couch in the corner.

 

“I think,” Bruce says quietly, “I think if we were to do a few scans, we’d see that your brain is incredibly active. I think the repeated cryostasis would have something to do with that, and so would the experimental procedures that you had performed on you. I think that your neural pathways _might_ be realigning.”

 

He looks up at Bucky, and Bucky, looking back, starts to smile.

 

“I think your brain might be healing itself.”

 

* * *

 

It’s not what he was expecting. It’s not even what he’d hoped for, but the scientist is looking at him like a person, more human than machine, and he’s not used to that. It draws him up short when he smiles at him. When he tells him his brain is doing the work for him, fixing itself up. When he keeps looking at him, kind and quiet, like he’s waiting for some sort of reaction.

“That’s… good?”

“Well, yes,” Banner says, tugging his glasses from his face and rubbing them against his shirt. “It’s probably very good. What they were doing to you—” He shakes his head, his smile dropping away in a moment. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But now that you’re away from it, from their—practices, the damage isn’t being repeated.”

 

“Question,” Natasha says, waving a hand in the air. “His memories. Will he get them back? The physical’s all well and good, but what we’re looking for is a little more mental.”

Banner shrugs. “I can’t tell you. This is purely conjecture, but they may not have been wiped, just disconnected.”

Bucky glances back at Natasha. She’s staring at him, at his head, like she might be able to find the answers she needs by boring straight through it, physical repercussions be damned.

“Will it hurt?”

The question comes before he realizes he’s spoken, and then everyone’s eyes are on his. They are all full of different shades of the same pity, but Steve’s is the worst. Steve looks gutted. Bucky shakes his head.

“I just meant— _reconnecting_. Won’t that—” Jesus. There’s no way to save this. He grits his teeth and falls quiet.

 

Banner reaches out to brush his hand against his arm—it’s careful, not enough to make him feel hold down or caged in, but an attempt at comfort that’s almost successful.

“It will be disorienting, even uncomfortable. But I promise you, we’re not trying to hurt you. And we’ll do everything we can to spare you any pain.”

He smiles at him when Bucky looks up again.

 

And then hope, small and wide and sounding like a trumpet. But the trumpet’s clear and floating, and Bucky finds himself looking around for the source of it, staring past Steve into the hazy far corner of the office.

 

The memory is overwhelming, a thick gold haze that has him clenching the arms of the chair. He tries to ground himself, tries to remember where he is. _New York, 2014. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky Barnes. 2014. New York. New York_.

 

(There’s dancing. So much dancing, quick feet, loud, pure music. A girl in red. Steve—and then Steve. Two memories at once, two halves at once, back to back.)

 

“Bucky?”

 

The music is something to dance to. He remembers the steps.

 

“I’m fine,” he whispers. He doesn’t want to miss this.

 

(Small Steve beaming at the musicians and dancing with no one, a drink in one hand and no eyes on him but Bucky’s. New Steve and a girl in red. New Steve besotted. The girl in red with eyes only for him. Her eyes, and Bucky’s.)

 

There’s so much light, so much sound. He gets to his feet. He knows where he is, he knows who he is, and he knows this is important.

“Bucky?”

 

( _Peggy_? New Steve, still smiling. Old Steve, looking back. Not seeing New Steve, but Old Bucky, and Bucky is almost there. Bucky knows how bony that shoulder feels under his arm when he squeezes it. Bucky knows how the drink tastes when he steals a sip. _Really_? Old Steve laughing.)

 

“I’m fine,” Bucky says, but he isn’t. There’s so much in his chest that his mouth is open, breathing hard, trying to loosen the pressure. His eyes might be watering. It’s too much.

 

( _Why buy my own drink when—_ )

 

“—I’ve got yours.”

“What?”

 

(Old Steve looking at him. _Dick_. Bucky laughs.)

 

“Is this one of them? Is this what the memories have been doing to him?”

“They haven’t been this bad before! He’s always been responsive.”

 

“I’m _fine_ , just—”

 

( _She likes you_ , a different Bucky says to New Steve, and New Steve turns red, and Bucky snorts. _Idiot. You’re so lost_. New Steve looks almost insulted, but he’s still so red. So red that Bucky can’t stop drinking.)

 

“Stupid,” Bucky says, and when he looks up, there’s only one Steve, his eyes wide and terrified and Bucky crumples.

 

            Steve catches him.

 

            “Sorry,” Bucky mutters, “Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

            “That was _incredible_ ,” Banner says from behind them, and then he’s dropping down besides Bucky, gently helping him up from Steve’s arms. “Are they always so potent?”

            “No,” Bucky says shortly. “That was a first.”

 

            “What was it?” Steve asks quietly. Bucky glances up at him. His eyes are so much darker. So much more full of shadows.

 

            “Later,” he says. He turns back to Banner. “Are we done here?”

            He looks surprised, but he recovers quickly. “Yes, of course. Uh, just, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know how things are going. Otherwise you should be fine on your own.”

            “Thanks, doc,” Bucky says, giving him a lopsided smile. Bruce nods after a second and takes a step back, waving him towards the door.

 

            The elevator ride down is silent. Steve keeps looking at him. But it’s funny—for the first time since he’s been back, Bucky can’t bring himself to focus on him. Instead he’s thinking about _all_ the Steves he’s known— how much more serious this one is than the one who blushed at pretty girls and knocked things over. The one that got in more fights than he could ever fight his way out of. They step out into the lobby together, and he thinks about what _those_ Steves, the bright-eyed, naïvely optimistic ones would think of it.

            “I didn’t want him to go to war,” Bucky says to Sam, turning his back to Steve to do it. He points back over his shoulder. “He cheated his way in anyway.”

            Sam glances between the two of them, his mouth quirking up into a half-smirk. “He’s not very good at following orders. Guess that’s why he’s usually the one giving them.”

            “I didn’t want to go, either,” he says, the words coming to him as he searches for them, filling in empty spaces with flashes of light and the sound of a letter being torn open with little regard for the contents. “They caught me with the draft—I was a much more patriotic as a Russian than I was an American.” That one he throws towards Natasha; she snorts.

 “There wasn’t much of a choice, there, comrade.”

“товарищ,” he corrects absently.

“вы вспомнили,” she says. She sounds impressed.

“No more,” he tells her, and looks at Sam. “I know we need the information that I’ve got lost in here, but my brain just keeps going back to _him_.”

He points at Steve again. He still won’t look at him.

“So what?” asks Sam. “You don’t think you can do it?”

 

Bucky shakes his head. “I need a little time with him. Maybe it’ll get it all out of my system and then I’ll be able to _focus_.”

 

He can almost feel Steve startle behind him, but he doesn’t care. This is turning into a liability.

 

And then Natasha starts laughing. “Out of your system?” she repeats. He’s happy it’s in Russian, at least. He can guess where she’s going with it. “Do you want him _out_ of you or in yo—”

“ _Shut up_ ,” he grits out. She grins wider.

“Think you can wrap it all up in an hour?” she asks in English. “Me and Wilson can stay here. I can tell he’s dying to peek at what Stark’s planning for his wings.”

“Okay, I _wasn’t_ , but if that’s suddenly on the table…” There’s a shine to his eyes, when he looks at Bucky, that Bucky doesn’t quite know what to think of. He turns around to press the elevator’s button again, and Natasha winds her arm through his.

“Here,” Sam says, tossing Bucky the keys. He catches them automatically with his left arm.

And that’s it. They step into the elevator,  the doors swoosh closed, and they’re gone, and Bucky has to look at Steve.

Steve, who’s blushing the way he blushed at Peggy. Steve, who a—

 _Oh_. 

 

* * *

 

 

The drive is almost too quiet. Steve isn’t sure what to say, and Bucky doesn’t bother filling the dead air between them, so they sit silently until they’re parked and through their security protocols.

Bucky walks in after Steve and leans against the door, closing it with his shoulders.

Steve looks at him, and then the couch, before walking over to it, sitting down gingerly before glancing back at Bucky.  

“Um,” he says, “So. That, with Dr. Banner. That’s good. Hopeful.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He hasn’t moved from the door, and when Steve looks at him, he thinks his eyes might not have left Steve the whole time, either.

His metal hand is twitching. Steve stands and crosses over to him to take it in between both of his, on impulse. Because he’s tired of watching the _nerves_ , the anxiety that Bucky broadcasts. Tired of watching it, and doing nothing about it.

“You’re going to be okay,” he tells the hand in between his, and then looks up at Bucky to smile at him. Bucky smiles back.

“Yeah,” he says again, and this time, Steve kisses him first.  

 

He pulls away after a long, perfect moment. “I didn’t, uh. I meant. When I said that. I, um.”

Steve feels his throat close up. “Oh, god,” he mutters, “I just—”

“Steve—”

“I didn’t mean to—”

Bucky kisses him. It feels like it’s to shut him up. Steve’s face has never felt hotter. Between his hands, it’s positively _steaming_.

“It’s alright,” Bucky says, running his hand through the hair at the nape of Steve’s neck. “It’s alright.”

 

“Yeah?”

Bucky closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Steve’s own, and the smile that breaks across his face is almost frighteningly sweet.

The alarm is only sharper for all they’re not expecting it. Bucky’s eyes fly open and his face shutters closed in one smooth movement.

“Buck—”

           

Chaos breaks out in twos. One: the wall caves in. Two: Bucky goes flying.

One, something hot sears across the side of Steve’s face. Two, Steve can’t see anything save for a few stark flashes of light.

 

One, Steve goes down. Two, Bucky yells.

 

And Steve can’t fight for anything, because he can’t see and he can’t move, and _Bucky_ —

Something hard slams across the back of his head and he goes down limp, unwilling to give up his consciousness, unable to do anything else. 


	15. And In Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next few chapter's are gonna get bloody. The violence and the violence threatened shouldn't be anything more extreme than an MCU PG-13 rating! (And is all of it true? Who knows! Threats are shady things, mes amis.)

He remembers waiting for him.

He _remembers waiting_ _for Steve_ , when his shoulder was on fire, when he was delirious from cold and pain and hunger, when the men dragging him away spoke in harsh, guttural voices that he couldn’t understand. He remembers counting seconds to get to minutes to get to hours to get to days. He remembers letting that go, and thinking about _Steve, Captain America, he will, he’ll find me, he’ll find me_.

 

He remembers the first time they freeze him, reaching out for the little bit of a reflection he can see, ready to look himself in the eye, promise himself that he’ll keep himself sane, keep himself alive, keep himself something that Steve would want back. Would want to save.

 

The thought of it makes him laugh. Blood comes up when his body heaves with it, but it doesn’t matter. It only sprays against someone’s boot as the van rattles along the pavement.

“Shut up,” someone grunts above him, their helmet muffling the intended ire.

“Just plant your boot in it,” someone else says, voice drawling and bored. “He makes another sound, knock out a few teeth. He won’t need them.”

 

Bucky turns his head to the side and spits a bloody mess out onto the nearest pair of pants.

The man hollers, but Bucky’s rolling out of the way before the boot can come in contact with his face, hauling himself up to sitting.

“Where are you taking me?” he demands. He’s expecting the rifle butt to the face; he dodges out of the way and growls back at them, rattling his arm against the binding they have him in.

They aren’t normal cuffs; when he strains his metal arm, shifting and grinding against them, they don’t so much as squeak.

 

So he laughs. Low and mean.

“How long do you think this is going to hold me?” he asks, grinning. He knows he’s got to be a macabre sight; he feels something warm dripping down the side of his face, and he doubts it’s sweat. There’s still blood in his teeth and down his chin. He shakes his hair back and watches them recoil.

“Long enough,” one of the helmeted goons says. His grip on his rifle is the tightest. Bucky’s grin widens.

“You must be new,” he snarls. “You hear about what I did to your buddy in the helicopter yet?”

He widens the joints of his metal hand slowly, testing the confines of the cuffs. He can’t feel a latch, but that’s impossible. It can’t be molded to him. And if it is, hell, he’ll bust of it with a little brute force. But….

He lets his grin fall slightly. “I tore him apart,” he says, softly, conspiratorially. “I didn’t have a whole lot of time. It was easiest to go straight for his chest.”

There’s a soft, insistent rattle. Someone’s shaking in their armor. He tips his head at them in a small, simulated bow.

Behind his back, one metal finger bends itself backwards with a soft whirr that he hopes no one else can hear. He’s searching for a keyhole, for some type of seam in the metal. He thinks he’s found one.

“So I jammed my hand as hard as I could through the glass, and then straight through his armor. A couple of sharp edges did the rest of the work for me. His ribs. _Great_ splinters. Made a mess of my arm, though. Took me forever to get the blood out—”

 

The electromagnetic pulse isn’t something he’s expecting, but he grits his teeth and manages not to make a noise before spiraling his finger back into position in his arm. He can feel it, though, feel the energy zapping its way through his shoulder, through his chest, through the few functioning nerves of his collarbones.

“I hate,” he growls, trying not to let the hot, sharp pain show, “getting blood out of the grooves of this thing. So you better be damn sure this thing holds.”

 

“It’ll electrocute you if you try to get out of it,” one of them blurts out.

 

 _No shit_. “You think I haven’t had worse?” Bucky snorts. A low thrum of panic is starting in the bottom of his stomach, to the same rhythm as the shocks that haven’t quite worked their way out of him yet. He can’t. He needs to get out. He needs to focus.

He blinks.

His other hand.

He tugs at it. The cuff is tight _enough_ , but if he can just—

“I have,” he barks, and they draw back. “I’ve had worse. For _decades_. And some kid builds electric handcuffs and you think that’ll do _shit_? How sure are you?”

He howls the last part as his thumb pops out of place, the cuffs slide off, and he leans forward just enough to catch them again, sliding it up around half of his hand.

The pain is—

He’s had worse.

He’s breathing hard, but he settles back on his heels, smiling beatifically up at the soldiers.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly, letting his eyes fall half-closed. Like a snake. Like he’s lethal. Like this, he looks dangerous. Like this, he makes them nervous. “I’m sure they’ll do the job.”

 

* * *

 

 

            Steve comes to with his heart racing. There’s something sparking, somewhere, and for a moment he’s worried about his vision—but he can see. It’s not him, but dust, billowing around what’s left of the room, thick and noxious. The sparks are from a bit of wire torn and spitting from the wall. There’s a wood beam collapsed just past his shoulder—he thinks about the blow to the back of his head, how tender it feels still, and thinks that this might be what’s done it.

 

            “Bucky,” he calls, weakly. His lungs feel like sandpaper. It hurts to breathe, the air coming in too rough, too quickly. He struggles to his feet, using the wood beam and the smoking remains of the coach to get to his feet. It sears against his palm. He doesn’t notice.

            “ _Bucky_ ,” he calls again, a little louder. The air is clearer here, but only just.

 

            There’s another light in the smoke. Two of them, blue and glowing.

            Three, he corrects, when Tony’s Iron Man suit comes into view, pushing past debris.

 

            “You alright?” he demands. Steve nods. He can feel a vicious curl of panic seething low in his chest. This isn’t good.

 

“Bucky isn’t here,” he says, because he knows they aren’t going to find him. He’s not going to be here. “They’ve got him. They—”

His knees give out.

“Woah, there, Cap,” Tony grunts, dropping down to help him up. “We have to get you out of here. Super lungs and all, I get that, but this is a little toxic, even for you.”

“They’ve got him.”

“I know, we’re—”

“ _Tony_ ,” he grits out, and Tony stops, his arms wrapped around Steve’s middle. “We let them take him back. We told him he was safe, that they wouldn’t—”

“Cap, listen to _me_.” Tony’s face plate slides open, and his face, though pale, is the most determined Steve’s ever seen it. “We are _going_ to get him back, and we are going to take them _down_. In that order. I swear it.”

It takes a moment to get his body to respond, but Steve nods, limping along with Tony for the way out.

“So much for a super-smart safe house,” he mutters, but he doesn’t mean for it to sound accusatory.

“Hey, now,” Tony says lightly. “Didn’t exactly expect for them to go for brute force. Those walls and windows could take people. Multiple explosives and a battering ram, all deployed in one go? The only reason everyone survived was luck and shoddy chemistry. Theirs.”

“Natasha and Sam?” Steve asks, once they’ve reached the garage and he can feel his lungs threading themselves together again.

“Other side of the house, checking out the damage,” Tony says. “You need to stay here. Get your breathing back. We’re going back to the tower.”

“No,” Steve says shortly. “We’re going after him. Now.”

“Duh,” Tony says. “But in a jet, that we’re gonna get from the tower. They blew the subtlety option right out of the water when they decided to demolish the house.”

Steve wants nothing more, right now, than to demolish _them_. To dismantle everything HYDRA has ever touched and watch them go down in flames with it. To tear apart anyone who’s ever laid a hand on—

“If they wipe him—if they wipe him, we’ll lose him, we have to—”

The air is coming in and out of his lungs too quickly. He needs to slow himself down. He needs to breathe. He needs to—

“Oh boy,” Steve hears, and then a mechanical click and something dark and heavy is being lowered over his head. “Jarvis,” Tony says, “settle him down. You know the drill.”

 

“Captain Rogers,” Jarvis says, clipped and even, “you are currently experiencing an anxiety attack.”

Steve blinks. “Me?”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Tony says. A hand—Steve assumes it’s Tony’s—squeezes at his arm. “Jarvis, full displays.”

Steve squints at the slow flare-up of the view screen. He sees his heart rate—too high—his oxygen levels—too low—and more data than he can conceivably take in at one go.

“I get the point,” he grits out.

“Then control your breathing and calm down. That can come off when you’ve got yourself together.”

There’s the sound of Tony’s feet repulsors firing up, and then he’s gone, and Steve’s stuck thinking about _how often_ he lets Bucky down.

Every time.

Every. Last. Time.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s thrown from the van, and the wince isn’t faked; it jars his thumb and sends the tremor all the way up his right arm. It doesn’t matter, though. They don’t notice. All they do is drop down and out, one on either side of him, three behind him, two in front, herding him along like a particularly wild sheep.

It’s almost funny.

The house that they walk him towards—and it is a house, off white and nondescript, a row of chubby gnomes decorating the front of the lawn, the flowers on the porch in different stages of dying and decay—is invisible in this neighborhood of similarly suburban houses. No one is outside to see the strategically armed men troop towards the side of the house. No one sees the one at the front lift the grate at the side of the house and usher the others down the stairs. No one sees it close.

 

It’s dark, under the house, but Bucky didn’t expect anything different. The part of him that is and always will be the Winter Soldier is prepared to go forward docile, to follow orders and not question who is orchestrating his torture, ready to believe when they say his _work_ is a _gift_ , is _necessary_ , is _essential to a new world order_.

He wasn’t a part of order, he reminds himself. He was a part of _chaos_. Not peace, but a dismantling of freedom.

Not a gift, but a monster.

He draws in a deep breath through his nose and eases the cuff over the swell of his thumb. If the joint begins to swell, he wants the cuffs off, or most of the way there. The last thing he needs is to have torn through his ligaments for nothing.

 

“We’ve done it, boys,” someone says, from behind him. “We’ve retrieved the asset.”

Someone else _whoops_ , loudly.

A few others laugh.

 

Bucky waits, and follows. He can get out of most things, and most places, with his arm and his training. He’ll kill who he needs to.

But if he could learn something, could get them a step closer to pulling HYDRA down around its too-many ears…

He’s had worse, he tells himself forcefully. He has had worse, he will have worse again, if it means doing something _better_.

 

“The Baron’s gonna be thrilled,” someone mutters. Bucky feels his blood freeze, but keeps moving, his grip on the cuff loosening.

 

Steve will come.

 

* * *

 

Steve tugs the helmet off of his head and takes a deep, slow breath. He finds Natasha and Sam in the back, where Tony said they would be, standing on the edge of the yard. Natasha has her phone pressed to her ear, lips thin and white. Sam stands several paces away, with his hands on his hips, looking up at the destruction. His hands fall to his sides when he catches sight of Steve.

“Anything?” he asks.

Steve shakes his head. “They hit us too fast. I got a beam to the back of the head, so I—I wasn’t any use.”

Sam nods. “Tony’s inside again, trying to see if he can pick up anything, if they left anything behind. You okay?"

“Not really,” Steve rasps out. His lungs are fine, and his head, apart from a few specks of newly-dried blood, is together, but—“I heard him yell, Sam. He needed help and I—”

“And _you_ ’re gonna be the first person through that door, pulling him out of the fire.” Sam’s glare is stern and brooks no argument. Steve bites back the self-pity at the edge of his tongue, and nods at him.

“They went by road,” Tony says, shouldering his way past a wall that bursts into a cloud of plaster behind him. He glances down at it. “Oops.”

“Hey.” Steve tosses him his helmet, and Tony puts it on with a smile.

“Thanks, Cap, glad to have you onboard and breathing again. As I was saying—road. We’ve got an image of their van. I managed to ping the image off a couple other cameras—”

“Hacking government property,” Natasha says, striding up to them, her expression clear. Her phone is nowhere to be seen. “Federal offense, Stark.”

Steve can’t see him roll his eyes, but even the faceplate looks a little amused. “So’s leaking government intel. But, wait.”

 

He jumps into the air with a burst from his feet and shoos his gloves towards them. “Now, come on, the car’s in working order. Tower, jet, rescue, three easy steps. Gooooooo…” The tail end of the word spirals off as Tony spirals up and away, disappearing in a rush of blue, gold and red.

 

Sam claps his hand down on Steve’s shoulder. He doesn’t look at him when he says, “Let’s go save your boy.”

 

He does hand Steve the keys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am _so weak_ , there are about 600 words that were supposed to be in the next chapter, not this one, but I am, as forementioned, _weak,_ and I couldn't completely double-cliffhang. *throws hands in the air*
> 
> *exits the room* 
> 
> (But I mean feel free to lemme know what you think and all that. Comments and kudos _so_ appreciated, you guys have been great.)


	16. Steve Will Come Steve Will Come Steve Will Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession time-- I've been sitting on this chapter for ages, but the things I've done with the following chapters have changed and re-changed enough that I felt like I ought to hold onto it, for fear of ret-conning in the future.  
> I know it's been forever! And I'm sorry about that. _Life complications_. But what I tried to do was get as close to the end by the new year, so I could dump most of it on here before the year was out.  
>  Unfortunately, it's very hard to write a lot in a short period of time, and I feel like I've been writing nonstop for a week.  
> So here is this. This isn't abandoned. More to follow, _today_. And I hope everyone has had the happiest of holiday seasons.

It comes on almost ghostly, the fading notes of a song drifting around him as he stands, waiting, in the middle of the basement room, HYDRA agents surrounding him. He grits his teeth against it; he has to ride this one out, more than anything—if he collapses, if he shows any sort of weakness, any sort of sign of the recovery that HYDRA must’ve been so afraid of, well. Steve can’t save him from a bullet through the brain.

But this one is _bad_. The music gets louder, and there’s _glitter_ at the corners of his vision, shining red and white, movement that looks like it might be dancing.

Bucky groans. The image flickers, phases out and in like it’s shitty reception, and he hopes to god it gets worse. He hopes it gets so bad it fades right out.

The best part is, the song sounds _bad_. Line-girls bad. _Who’ll give the Axis the_ —Bucky is going to _electrocute himself_ again, if he has to, he will, he’ll do it on purpose— _far as an eagle will soar_ —he swears to _god_ he will _shock_ himself into unconsciousness— _Captain America!_

“Where’s your boss?” he barks out, and half of every word is lost in the chambers of his chest, making his voice come out deep and feral. The guards at either side of him spring away. He wants to laugh, but he hears himself laughing, and that sobers him right up.

_You sound like a_ “Chump,” he says, out loud, and one of the guard rears back his arm, like he’s tempted to punch him. Bucky wants him to do it. Bucky wants him to hit him so hard the memory disappears again but—Oh.

 

This is Steve, standing next to him, rolling his eyes and furrowing his eyebrows and blushing-but-pretending-he-isn’t. This is Steve, with the cameras rolling, Steve on the screen, and his uniform is terrible and the dancing girls are beautiful and the song is _so bad_.

_Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American Way?_ He wants Russia back. He could see his way through the snow, past Natasha. This is worse. One of the guards says something. It must be an insult; he thinks, from the way another one is shaking with what might be laughter, it was a threat. _Who vows to fight like a man for what’s right, night and day?_

_Not me_ , Bucky thinks, sourly. It’s not even a _helpful_ memory. It’s not doing anything. It’s cutting him off from everything around him, but he can see Steve, still rolling his eyes, still crossing his arms like that might make him smaller, still too big. Still what he’s waiting for.

_It’s not so bad_ , Steve says, and Bucky—

_Who will campaign door-to-door for America?_

Bucky—

_Carry the flag shore to shore for America?_

Bucky owes it to him to be stronger than this. Bucky says, “You’re lucky I knew you before this, Rogers,” and one of the HYDRA agents, the shaking one, still, now, and quiet, says, “How did you know my name?” _From Hoboken to Spokane: the Star Spangled Man with a Plan!_

 

Bucky spins the cuff off and punches that one square in the face, and he uses his wrong hand, and it _hurts_ , but it’s worth it when he goes down shouting. _So fucking worth it_.

 

* * *

 

            When they get to the tower, they go straight to the top. Tony’s already waiting in the jet, the heat spinning off the asphalt and into their faces as they make their way towards it.

            “Took you long enough,” Tony says, and Steve can hear his grin through his faceplate. It should make him feel better; Tony probably means for it to. It doesn’t.

            “Don’t mind Steve,” Natasha says calmly, walking up the ramp after him and dropping into the pilot seat. “We broke a few speeding laws on our way over here. He’s probably feeling a little bit guilty.”

            “Can we please just go?” Steve’s breath feels tight in his chest. His voice comes out strained and a little high. He probably isn’t helping his case, but his hands are clumsy and slow on his seatbelt and they shake until he curls them into fists. All he can think of is Bucky, alone and compromised, with HYDRA. Bucky, being wiped clean again, being left empty, being forced into another round of torture and—

 

            “By the way, we might have backup.”

 

            Steve looks up. Natasha’s craned her head around to look at him, and her eyes flit from his face to his hands, her frown unchanging.

           

            “Bruce?”

            “Not on this one. We need a scalpel for this, not an axe, not yet. But an old friend.” She smiles, slightly, even as Steve scowls.

            “Do we really have time for more secrets, Natasha?”

            “Nope,” she says, and turns to the front. She closes the door and the craft starts to rise. Sam, from next to Steve, hits him in the arm. Steve jumps.

 

            “Easy,” Sam says quietly, settling his hand against Steve’s arm again and rubbing at it. “You need to breathe. Start thinking tactics, man. You’re gonna want to be as much help as you can be, right? So start breathing, and start thinking. Don’t dwell on anything you can’t affect right now. We’ll get there.”

           

            _I want to kill them_ , Steve thinks, and he thinks about the blood on Bucky’s arm, thinks about how _satisfying_ that would be, how much they’d all _deserve_ it—and he breathes in, deep, through his nose, and smiles at Sam. Steady, calm, grim-faced Sam, standing up and walking over to be Natasha’s co-pilot. Sam who thinks Steve can do this, thinks Steve can distance himself from this, thinks he can think tactics when Bucky—

 

            But he needs to. He needs to think tactics, he needs to think about saving Bucky, not avenging him, not yet, because they can save him, this time. He can save him. He _has to be able to save him this time_.

 

            “You’re awfully quiet, Stark,” he calls behind him.

 

            “Hm?” Tony says. “Oh, no. I’m just scrolling through as many cameras as I can get into. We’ve still got two possible… locations… you… kn—nope. No, okay, I got it. Natasha! It’s neither. Big bad black van drove itself straight into suburbia. I’m sending the address to the control panel.”

 

            “I see it,” Natasha says, and then they’re flying.

 

* * *

 

            The first one goes down with a satisfying crunch, and so Bucky turns and does the same with the soldier behind him, with his good arm, tucking the other up behind him like he’s taunting them. _I can do this with one hand_. One of them drops of his own volition; Bucky isn’t surprised. HYDRA’s made of cowards.

 

            The other five back off quickly, raising their weapons as he flies at them, all of his training going into taking them out. He yanks up a rifle and it fires behind him—he gets a grunt out of it, and another body on the ground before he shoves it forward and up, knocking the agent out. He gets a boot on the ground to sweep out one agent’s legs; the one that comes to his aid gets a fist in the stomach and a knee to the groin.

            “Come, now!” Bucky hears, low, jovial, and accented, and he hesitates. He hesitates, and he gets and elbow to the neck for the trouble, but he rallies up against it, gritting his teeth and shoving his own elbow back, in between the panels of the body suit, where he knows he’ll strike soft flesh.

            “He’s injured! He’s favoring his right side! Make use of that, you numbskulls.”

            One of them tries to; someone grabs at his arm, striking at his hand, but he’s learned a couple tricks with his metal arm. Like spinning it backwards to strike at a momentarily exposed neck. The soldier chokes on his way down, his hyoid bone fractured, if not broken right in two.

            “Fine,” Strucker sighs. “I’ll take care of it.”

           Bucky can’t _look_ for him. One soldier is on his feet again, his motions pained and slow, but his hands are raised, and if Bucky looks away—

            If he—

            There’s something twitching at the back of his neck, a small, sharp pain that he could ignore, he could fight through, but there’s something cold about it. Something cold, seeping into his skin from the tip of whatever’s buried itself into his flesh.

            He reaches up a hand to yank it out. It’s a dart, little and made of cold steel. A shining blue drop of _something_ falls from the tip to the floor.

            He jabs it into the neck of the last man standing, and he goes down with a woozy little groan.

            Bucky looks up at Strucker, where he stands with a little gun held in front of him, graceful and cruel.

            “Fuck you,” he pronounces carefully, and promptly passes out.

+

 

He wakes up strapped to a chair, and it’s so reminiscent of every single other time this has happened to him, he almost laughs. Until, of course, something sharp is jabbed into the crook of his arm.

“What the fuck that?” he barks to the man next to him. Doctor, agent, he can’t tell—only that he’s dressed all in black, and the white mask over his face shields them from his view.

“Something to make you a little more friendly,” he drawls, and steps away, clasping his hands behind his back. Bucky closes his eyes. Three. Two. One.

 

“Good, very good,” Strucker says, and Bucky can feel the bile rise in his chest. He knows what happens next. Next is the gauze in his mouth, the tongue guard. Next is the electricity zapping through his brain and taking away any sense of self along with it. Next comes the pain.

_Steve will come. Steve will come. The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan._ The thought of the song makes him laugh. That’s good—the laugh draws Strucker up short. The laugh puts him on firmer ground.

“Something funny, soldier?”

“Absolutely,” Bucky deadpans. “I had almost forgotten how it feels to be tied up to a testing table. I’m feeling nostalgic.”

“Yes,” he says slowly, and Bucky turns his head to watch him approach. “I imagine it must generate a… great amount of emotion.”

Bucky snorts.

“I imagine that you are wondering what will happen next.”

“Believe it or not, I remember this part,” he bites out. _Steve will come Steve will come Steve Steve Steve_. He wonders if Steve will get there before or after there’s nothing left of him. Before or after he’s an asset again, a shell, a weapon pointed straight at his shield.

“But no! You do not.”

Bucky stares at him. Baron Strucker sounds _pleased_ about something. A careful, gloved hand pushes back Bucky’s hair, and he stays still for it, for the palm to press against his cheek and pat it, twice. “You have come back new for us.”

“New,” Bucky repeats. Dread is curdling the contents of his stomach, and he turns his face away again, gritting his teeth against the way his muscles tense.

“New. Why, by now, you should be falling apart. Your programming is—excuse me, _was_ —so very flawed. You had a tendency to react… poorly, to any sort of interference.”

Strucker’s hand is rough on his chin when he drags his face around, using his other hand to pry open one of Bucky’s eyes and stare down at the pupil.

“But here you stand,” he continues, “a soldier fully realized.”

“Real poetic,” Bucky tells him, “Almost brought me to tears.”

 

He’s afraid, is the thing—this is so far off script that he’s sure Strucker’s going by a completely different book, but he doesn’t know what it is, and he doesn’t know what’s happening. He should be wiped, by now, but he doesn’t see any of the machinery they’d need to do it. He doesn’t see any scientists. Whatever they gave him to _behave_ hasn’t done anything to him. His head is too clear. Aside from the bruises he gave himself taking out that unit, he feels fine.

 

He shouldn’t.

 

“Together, soldier, we will do great things,” Strucker says quietly, letting go of his face.

“I’ve heard that before,” Bucky spits, thrashing up against the bonds that hold him. “I know what your _great things_ are like. I want nothing to do with them.”

Strucker laughs, loud and sharp. “That ideology! You _have_ come far.”

 

Bucky isn’t listening. He’s bucking against the straps, looking for a weakness, looking for something, anything that will let him rip through them. The backhand across his face is expected, if unpleasant; it makes him laugh, and he has to turn his head to spit out a mess of blood and saliva.

 

“Go on, then,” he says. “Wipe me. _Do it_.”

 

“Hm,” Strucker says. “No.”

 

It makes Bucky stop. His limbs still tremble, but he turns his face to look at him. He’s standing back a little, eyeing Bucky carefully.

 

“What do you mean, ‘no?’”

 

“You are…” He searches for the word. “Useful like this. You have loyalties now,” he says, his lip curling with revulsion at the very idea.

“Not to you I don’t,” Bucky snorts.

“No, I wouldn’t imagine that you did. Still—it’s a weakness. You are so beautifully, splendidly _weak_. You have all the strength we have given you, and yet none of the defenses. You think, perhaps, that I should kill you now, or something similarly dramatic. But I will _not_.”

“So you’ll what? Let me off on good behavior?” Bucky spits straight into his face.

The Baron takes a stately, calm step back and draws a handkerchief out of his pocket, mopping away the glob of bloody spittle from his cheek and forehead. And then he chuckles, quietly.

 

He pulls a small, flat disk the size of a quarter from his pocket and depresses a ring in the middle. It blinks blue.

“Insurance,” is all he says when he tucks it up against Bucky’s temple, underneath his hair, pressing it close to his skin. The adhesive sparks, slightly. Bucky flinches. “Don’t make me use it, yes? It would be such a waste. Now…”

 

There’s a string hanging from the ceiling behind him. He walks towards it, and tugs—a panel slides back from the wall, and the screen behind it flickers to life. It takes Bucky a moment to realize what he’s seeing.

_No_. He fights, because he can. Whatever they tried to give him, dose him with to calm him down, he won’t let it take. He throws himself against his bonds again and again as he watches Steve lead Sam and Natasha and Tony into the HYDRA house. He knows that their guards are up, knows them enough to know that they’ll go down swinging, but they’re sitting ducks, if Strucker has eyes on them like this. They’re in trouble and he’s _stuck_.

Strucker clucks his tongue against his teeth. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“What is this?” Bucky demands. He’ll have bruises all over his chest and arms if he survives this.

“A bargain,” Strucker says, and walks across the room to pick up a small digital device. “Observe.” He presses a button.

 

Steve drops. Someone shouts. The screen gives way to static.

 

Inside of his head, Bucky screams bloody murder. Outside it, he begs his body to relax. Steve has survived worse. He has to believe he’ll survive this.

 

“Damn it,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake. When Strucker looks at him, he scowls.


	17. As A Precaution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2015! May all your crops yield great returns and all your birds grow feathers.

“Jarvis, scan him, now,” Tony says tightly, but Steve’s already waving him off and stumbling back up to his feet.

“Just a headrush,” he mutters. It’s strange—he feels fine now, and he felt fine before, but somewhere between all of that was a jolt of something that felt too much like electricity, sharp and too hot down his spine. “Keep going, I’m—” Metal fingers brush along the back of his neck, and he flinches.

“Shit,” Tony says, falling back.

Steve runs his hand over the back of his neck. There’s what feels like a wide, fresh welt across the back of his neck. “I must have…”

What? The house is empty. There’s no one here. There’s certainly no one he missed widely enough that they managed to clock him in the back of the neck. Still, it stings.

Natasha moves towards him to push his hand out of the way. Her fingers against his neck are cool.

“Might be something here,” she says. “Tony.”

“On it. Jarvis says there’s nothing wrong with him, but there was a spike in everything, a second ago.”

“And this?”

Steve can’t see what _this_ is, but he doesn’t care—they don’t have time for this.

“Can we focus? I’ll recover. Bucky—”

 

“Has survived them for more years than you’ve been awake again,” Tony says curtly. “He can stand a few more minutes of us making sure that you’re alright.”

 

Steve can hear Natasha’s phone buzzing; vaguely, he registers Sam walking along the length of the flat stretch of wall behind them, feeling for god knows what. Steve tunes all of them out.

He feels fine. No muscle pains, no sign that anything abnormal is going on internally. There’s a chance that it’s poison, that it’s some sort of tracking sensor, that it’s lethal—but lethal doesn’t mean much to him anymore. He’s survived worse.

“I’m alright,” he says finally. “We keep going.”

“Great thing for a headstone,” Tony mutters. “Steven ‘We Keep Going’ Rogers.”

 

“We have a job to do, Stark,” Steve says, shouldering his way past him and deeper into the house.

Natasha insinuates herself against him, her hands on his chest, and Steve glares down at her. It does nothing.

“This is all very ‘no man gets left behind,’” she says, “but we aren’t leaving you behind either, Cap, and like this, you might be a liability.”

“Guys?” Sam says from behind them.

“Then I’ll continue alone. You can all hold here,” Steve scoffs.

Natasha scowls at him. “Absolutely not.”

“Hey. Hello?” Sam tries.

“That’s an order, Widow.”

Natasha’s smile is small and mean. “This isn’t a job, Cap.  I’m here on a volunteer basis. You aren’t my CO, and what you’re asking us to do is dangerous and stupid.”

It draws Steve up short. Sam, from the wall, clears his throat, annoyed. “Whenever you decide to start listening to me: I think we’re being watched.”

 

They all turn to him. Sam rolls his eyes and holds out his hand. In it is a large, round metal pellet, blackened on one end.

 

“Catch,” he says, and tosses it to Natasha. Steve steps closer to her to look at it. It looks like—

“Oh my god,” Tony blurts out, his faceplate sliding up. “They got the drop on Captain America with a BB gun.”

 

“A modified BB gun,” Natasha allows, holding the pellet up to the light. “The ridges probably hurt. And I think there was some sort of charge on it.”

“Explains the spike,” Tony says with a smirk. “My god. What would you do against a pack of sixth graders?” He holds out his hand. Natasha drops the ball into it, and he grins.

 

“This—this isn’t— we still have to—” Steve stares around at them, stunned out of words. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he says finally, “at all. If the got a clear shot at me, why waste it?”

 

“For this, maybe?” Tony shrugs. “It’s stalled things. Maybe you aren’t their target.”

 

“Back-up in five,” Natasha says, quietly. She’s looking at Tony, but she’s still pressed against Steve, holding him in place.

 

“We can wait for five.”

 

“We—” And then Steve is on his front, his jaw bruising against the floor tiles. Natasha has his arm twisted up behind him, her knee pressed against the small of his back, pinning him down.

“Sam,” she says, and tosses him one of her widow bite cuffs, nodding at the wall. “Jam it into the hole and press the trigger.”

“Ma’am,” Sam says, a little awed, and puts the cuff over his hand.

Steve twists his head around to glare up at Natasha out of the corner of his eye. “This is so unnecessary.”

“Hush,” she says, but he can see the beginnings of a smirk playing around the corners of her lips. “Sam, is it done?”

“I—”

There’s a sound of something popping and the smell of smoke, and then Sam’s feet come into Steve’s view as he hands the cuff back over.

“Done,” he says.

“Good,” Natasha answers.

“Get off me,” Steve throws in, for the hell of it.

“Hell of a thing to complain about,” he hears Sam mutter, and Natasha’s knee digs a little deeper into his spine.

 

* * *

 

Strucker stares at him.

Bucky shrugs.

“What did you expect?” he asks, as scathing as he can manage. “That I’d developed an attachment to _Captain America_? You’re stupider than you look.”

Strucker hums. “Perhaps you are… less weak, than expected. No matter. Termination will be—”

Bucky barks out a high, rough laugh. “Was that it? You’d hoped to blackmail me with _his_ well-being? No.”

 

He settles a little straighter in his bonds. It should be terrifying, under Strucker’s full attention—it _would_ be terrifying, but there’s so much at stake here. He has to be better. He has to _beat him_. He swallows.

He smiles.

“No,” he repeats, “there’s one thing I want. Steve Rogers was one way to get it. He was my last mission, I remembered that—which made him useful to you. Which made you seek _me_ out. Why? You had him in your crosshairs.” He nods to the static image on the screen. It lets out a loud static buzz. He wrinkles his nose. “You could have taken him down. Why did you hesitate?”

“I had hoped for your cooperation.” Strucker shrugs. “If there is no hope for that…”

“You’re going to have to offer me something more than Captain America’s _life_. What use do I have for that? Try harder.”

The hand across his face isn’t so much a surprise as it is a relief. Pain provides focus. _Focus_. He concentrates on the bruise on top of a bruise on top of _another_ bruise, and then there’s a reason for his grimace. There’s a reason for the way his shoulders shake.

“Please,” Strucker says quietly, “stop trying so hard to lie to me. You did not go to find him because of _us_ , boy. You went to find him for answers. You discovered your own connection to him, and sought to exploit it.”

Bucky grits his teeth. His molars catch against the inside of his cheeks with a fresh rush of blood.

“You know now that you served together, and you’re looking for something more. Isn’t that right?”

He stoops down closer to Bucky’s face, in some sort of attempted earnestness, and Bucky stares up at him, unblinking, barely breathing.

“We will get the information from him, and deliver it to you. All that we ask for is one task in return.”

“And if I’d rather get the information myself?”

“Ah.” Strucker leans away, his back to Bucky, a gesture, no doubt, more in regards to the faith he has in the bonds that hold the soldier than the soldier himself. His flesh hand is aching again from all of his thrashing; it’s a good bet that he won’t be able to go anywhere. “That may be a little bit… difficult. You noticed the injection earlier?”

“To keep me _complacent_?” Bucky laughs, all of his teeth showing. “Shoddy formula.”

“No.” He goes over to the control panel again, shielding his movements from Bucky’s view. In a few seconds, the screen flashes to something different—a body scan, of Bucky, if the blue lit metal arm is anything to go by.

Something shows up in a scattering of small, violet dots.

“The bots we injected you with are blind to most biological sensors,” Strucker says, his voice as calm as a science lesson. “They’re quite ingenious, actually. We will be able to track you to a certain amount of distance, but that isn’t quite all they’re for.”

“Convenient, anyway,” Bucky deadpans. He can’t get a good breath of air into his body.

“The nanomites in yourbody will recognize Captain America’s physical signature. Would you like to know what would happen, were you to be closer than ten feet to each other?”

Strucker’s squirming like a child with a bug underfoot—Bucky is only surprised that he isn’t clapping his hands and heels together, that his smile isn’t wider.

He can imagine what would happen. Has seen technology like it—step over the threshold here, trigger the explosives. The only question is which one of them would die. Steve can’t find him.

 _He_ can’t find _Steve_.

“You—” It feels like all the air in the world is ghosting out of Bucky’s lungs, and he can’t find any strength in him to draw it back. “I’m—?” _A walking landmine._

“You will perform one last act for us, and then I will disable it. You see, soldier, I have no interest in killing Captain America. He is not as… _in the way_ , as he likes to believe that he is. I only need you to do this. And then, we will hand the Captain over to you.”

Strucker turns back to him, his smile still in place. There’s a speck of blood from Bucky’s mouth still clinging to the end of his nose. Bucky swallows.

“What do you want me to do?”

 


	18. Would You Believe It

Sometimes, in the halls of the compound, there is dancing. Small feet in the air like raindrops, small sounds every time they fall, silence when they rise. Spinning. Hips open, backs arched, not a laugh in the air, not a noise, but the _movement_ , she remembers. She remembers it most on nights like this.

Sometimes, in the halls of the compound, there is smoke.

It matters little to her.

She considers, of course, following her training. There is the option of rolling into the smoke, staying low and scuttling like a spider into the rooms down the hall, in the interest of protecting the interests of the state—her commanding officers. There is that option.

There is also, she thinks, sliding into a crouch and tucking herself up against the wall, avoidance and survival.

And then there is one of them in front of her, eyes bulging, the veins in his forehead standing stark against the white of his face. He sinks to his knees in front of her, still gagging on nothing, his hands fanning ineffectively at his neck.

Behind him a pair of black boots, and a silver hand held out for her to catch onto.

She does.

On her feet, she’s still just as much shorter than him as she was the first time, but the eyes that look at her are at once clearer and full of something she does not recognize. He releases her hand at once and grips her by the shoulders too hard, the metal fingers digging against bone.

“You don’t remember me,” she realizes, and it is, she thinks, a shame. A disappointment, at least. He scowls at her. “What did they do to you?”

He shakes his head. For a moment, though, there’s something almost soft in the way he looks at her. He nods, once, and then he slams her against the wall, hard enough that her head smashes back into the brick.

Troops find her like that an hour later. The smoke is gone, and so is the man with it, just as much a ghost.

She recounts everything she remembers, which is little.

“Something flashed. I couldn’t see anything, and then I was thrown into the wall behind me.”

The weeks that follow lead to a slew of insulting comments thrown around about her weight and stature. The solution is an easy one— she bests every large, male soldier they match her against. Eventually, the comments stop.

Eventually, they catch him. It’s a disappointment.

 

+

 

Clint busts through the window like a cinder block, rolling onto his feet with his bow up in a blur of red and purple. Three other agents come through the window behind him, all armed to the teeth, goggles and masks on, ready for a battle that Steve is getting less and less sure is actually happening.

“Well,” he says, after a moment, lowering his arrow. “This isn’t as fun as I was expecting it to be.” He raises a hand behind him, and the agents drop their weapons, pulling the black hoods from their heads and dropping their goggles down around their necks. His quiver isn’t the shape it’s supposed to be; when Natasha looks closer, he winks at her and unclips the extra luggage. It’s the shield. Of course it is.

One of the assembled is Agent 13. Sharon. Steve hears Natasha snort and shoves her off of him.

“Don’t worry,” Natasha says, watching Steve jump to his feet, ever the showman. “I’m sure we can find some for you.”

“Don’t know where,” Tony grumbles, sealing himself up again. “Not a single sign of life in the house. Unless HYDRA’s learned to stop breathing, which I can’t say I’d mind.”

Sharon barks out a bitter laugh. Natasha imagines it must be rough for her. She’d come to SHIELD first, and as far as the intelligence and espionage business went, SHIELD was a nice, trigger-happy game of happy families. She didn’t seem the type to go the route of independent contracting, so it would be CIA, maybe FBI.

She must be bored senseless.

“Cap,” Clint says, and Steve nods to him in greeting. “Brought you something.” Steve doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing; he stands straighter with the shield in hand, holds it better than he does a gun.

“Thanks,” he says after a moment, settling it against his arm. “Too bad it doesn’t get to see the fight we were expecting.”

“Check upstairs,” Natasha tells Sharon, “just in case. Take two more.”

Sharon nods and goes, the other two flanking her. It’s a precaution; Natasha trusts Tony’s tech, minimally, but enough to move forward with his intel as a place to start.

“Clint and I can start from the back door, if someone wants to take the front, work their way west.”

“You’ll do the same?” Steve speaks, finally, his mouth still in an angry little bow at her insubordination. Natasha sends him a winning smile.

“Aye aye, cap’n.”

He breathes out through his nose hard enough for his nostrils to flare.

“Tony and, ah, Agents—”

“Trimmons and Fit—”

“22 and 23, sir,” the second agent says, shooting the other a quelling look.

“With me, then,” Steve sighs, slamming through the front door.

 

Natasha slips out through the back before the others follow, Clint behind her. The backyard is perfectly manicured. Geraniums line the corners of the small, square yard, fenced in by pebbles of varying sizes and a matching, marble-like sheen. Even the grass is an idyllic shade of green.

“I don’t like this.”

“C’mon, Nat,” Clint deadpans. “It’s a little boring, but thing’s have been busy.”

“I wish they’d stayed under their rock,” she says quietly, glancing back at Clint. He nods to her, his lips pressed together in a half frown. She knows that, out of everyone, he’d understand what she meant—it had been so _good_ , for so long. They’d been alright. They’d been _doing_ right—and did it matter, really, who they were in bed with if the world was a little safer? It wasn’t, of course, it was all illusory, but god, what a perfect illusion.

“Figured you would’ve given the states a break for a bit,” Clint says, walking out into the yard with her, bumping shoulders. She smiles. She’s missed this.

“I was thinking about it. Didn’t have much time to make a choice, though.”

“Right, the Russian.”

“The _other_ Russian.”

“Eh.”

They make a full round of the yard before calling it and edging around the side. Here the grass has grown a little taller, weeds feathering into bushes and small bunches of unwanted flowers. There’s one square that’s yellower than the rest, dead as if something had sat on top for too long, pressing down the growth. A few spots look freshly trampled—from Clint and the other agents’ entrance, no doubt. Natasha almost expects to see toys, a bike, some leftover sign of suburban life.

“Huh,” Clint says.

She turns to him. His face is a careful blank, his eyes glazing over as he looks the house up and down. He has something.

“What?”

“It’s just, a house like this, you expect a cellar.”

She doesn’t answer him—only raises an eyebrow. He’s using his thinking voice; when he looks at her, his eyes are wide and his mouth is pursed, like he’s waiting for her to bust in with some acknowledgment of his brilliance.

“Do you,” she says finally, and he nods sagely.

“Yes you do, Natasha. The foundation’s too low for it to be above ground only—look.” He pats the side of the house, dropping into a squat to measure the visible cement with the flats of his hands. “It has to be at least twice this, and if we can’t see it, that means it’s underground. If it’s underground, it’s got to go deep, and if it’s going deep…”

“It’s usable real estate,” Natasha says slowly, taking a step back to look at the picture the house presents. They’d been inside. If there was a door, she wouldn’t have missed it. If there wasn’t, there would be an entrance from outside. “When did you get so good at construction?” she asks, walking towards the dead patch of grass in the middle of an otherwise abundantly green yard.

“Bermuda,” he says, without clarification.

“Sounds nice.”

She waves her hand over the grass. It doesn’t cast a shadow. 

“It was.”

She takes a step back. Thinks, for a moment, about pixels shattering apart on her face, another illusion ruined. Takes a running start.

When she lands on the photostatic blind, it ripples in the air like a mirage before a spark catches and she kicks it free. Underneath, the door is nothing but a layer of slightly warped wood.

“Hey,” Natasha calls. Steve’s the first one around the corner, beat only by Sharon, who ducks through the broken window with admirable grace.

“How did we miss that?” Steve asks, and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Well, gosh! I can’t imagine! Couldn’t have been the camotech hiding something from us that we didn’t even know to look for.”

Sharon’s eyebrows fly up so high, Natasha can’t see them for her hairline; Steve’s already gone, rocketing down into the hidden cellar, Sam going after him after one curious look between Natasha and Clint—and isn’t that interesting.

She stores that for later and drops down into the cellar, skipping six steps and jumping from the seventh to the ground, tugging a gun out before she comes back up.

It’s an open cavern, wider than it should be, and it’s entirely deserted.

“We won’t find them,” she says quietly. She’s sure—if no one’s running out on their entry, no one important is left here. “Should we look for their exit route?”

When no one answers her, she looks out at the assembled. Steve is standing, still and straight, his head bowed. There’s something wet smeared across the ground in front of him. It’s probably blood.

“Steve,” she says. His eyes snap back to her, expressionless. She doesn’t care for it. “What do you want us to do?”

He shakes himself. “We should—”

 

A monitor in front of them comes to life, and it’s so reminiscent of a few weeks ago that Natasha almost snorts.

She recognizes the man in the image. File #33435. War criminal. Presumed dead. At this point, she ought to know better. She wonders how many ghosts need to come out before the words ‘presumed dead’ would be banned from being thrown together. _Presumed dead, i.e., most likely active in the leading shadow organization for the regulation of all mankind._

“Captain America,” he says, turning to face the camera. “Friends,” he adds after a pause, almost graciously, one gloved hand opening in a little half-wave. “I am Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker. I am a head of HYDRA, if you will. What is perhaps more important to you is that I am currently in possession of a tactical advantage.”

The camera shifts up slightly. Over Strucker’s shoulder is another screen. On it, a man sits up, a hood over his head and his hands bound behind him. One arm gleams silver. He struggles against his bonds, briefly. Someone off-camera swings something long and slightly rounded—a pipe, maybe, or a night stick—that hits him in the back of the head. He stops struggling.

“How unfortunate,” Strucker says calmly, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth. “I look forward to your finding me, Captain. I believe we have much to talk about.”

The video feed cuts without warning. Steve starts forward like it’s instinct, his hand half stretched forward, reaching for a Bucky that they’ve missed. His shield falls, the sound echoing back to them in stereo. He’ll be furious, once that sets in. The idea that they were one floor away, _oblivious_. Natasha rolls her shoulders back. She doesn’t like how that feels, being _close_. Just barely missing their target—it’s not what she’s used to, and it’s not something she’s comfortable with. She’d wanted to help James, she’d signed up to save Bucky, but this—this feels personal.

She decides she wants Wolfgang Von Strucker to burn.

It is, she thinks, a new place to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've all enjoyed the first day of the year! I myself have spent it eating food and cleaning house. You win some, you lose some.


	19. An Appropriate Period of Time Ago...

Strucker’s smile is slow and too wide. “Cooperation. I had hoped for as much.”

He waves his hand at someone behind Bucky, and the cot he’s strapped to scrunches up into the approximate shape of a chair. With a few quick clicks, his bonds come undone. With Strucker watching him with sharp eyes, he doesn’t have the space or the freedom to fully evaluate the situation, so he does nothing more than roll out his shoulders and his wrists, grimacing at the way he’s held the injured one. It’s already started to heal, thank god, but the last thing he needs is for it to reform crooked.

“You’ve got it,” he grunts, and without bracing himself, he cracks it back into place. It hurts, _god it hurts_ , but he’s not paying attention to it, not now. He’s got something to sell: full cooperation and _obedience_. He remembers this part. “It’s a relief to return to employment.” Voice flat, low register. Facial muscles relaxed.

“Is it?” Strucker asks, his expression unchanging.

Bucky looks at him and shrugs. Measured: two-inch shoulder rise. An effort to display a lack of care. A show of submission to adversity. “It’s what I’m good at. What are my orders?”

If he thought Strucker had looked pleased before, it’s nothing on now. He tosses him a plain white handkerchief and leans back against the computer banks’ control panel, crossing his arms in front of him. Bucky uses it to mop up the worst of the blood around his mouth and nose, rubbing at his skin until the handkerchief’s gone from white to russet brown all over. Acceptance of a white flag. He conceals a smile against the fabric, but he makes sure it’s gone when the handkerchief drops. No time for irony.

“You’ll be our eyes and ears at a very important event, soldier. An absolute ball,” Strucker says when he tosses the handkerchief away, like it’s something Bucky should be looking forward to.

Bucky snorts. “I haven’t got a suit.”

Zemo laughs. “You shouldn’t need one. You will spend most of your time in low cover. We will track you to the location. You will in no way contact Captain America, or any of his _Avengers_. If you do—” He taps at the bruise on Bucky’s arm. “These little robots are very keen on meeting your hero. Unfortunately, they are also set to detonate as soon as they do.”

“Right back to you killing me,” Bucky sighs. As if they’d ever left that lovely thought.

“Do you think he would survive it? Thousands of explosions in his blood stream?” Strucker paces away like he isn’t speaking to him. Bucky glares at his back. Steve would _too_ survive that. He’d have to. Small robots, small explosions. Right? If he’d been able to survive Bucky’s—admittedly flawed—effort, he’d survive that. “I suppose we could find out, if you would prefer, but—”

 

“What am I supposed to do?” Bucky interrupts. “At the ‘event.’”

 

“Instructions will be delivered to you,” Strucker calls back to him, turning out of the room. He stops in the doorway, his hand resting against the frame. “For now, find your way out.” He points past Bucky, to the shadowy hint of a passageway behind the computer bank. “Down that hallway until you reach the street.”

 

Bucky slides to his feet, looking around himself. Everyone’s slipped away; even the scientist or doctor or whatever he was who slipped the sensors into Bucky’s arm has taken off. The whole place is quiet. He edges around one of the computer panels and glances down the hallway. It’s clear.

He walks around the perimeter of the room, testing for other exits. There are three more hallways, each leading out, presumably, and every path already taken by other agents.

He’s in the center of an empty hive.

He sighs and returns to his way out. If they were going to bring in more manpower, they wouldn’t be waiting. Easier now to trust that he’ll go where they tell him to. It’d be hard not to, with a bomb strapped to his arm. But to stop the directions at street level… It’s strange.

He’s dealt with stranger.  

Bucky takes a breath, arranges the handkerchief under his boot in a way that’s a little more aesthetically pleasing, and dives forward, taking the tunnel at a jog.

The tunnel does empty out at street level, a mile and a half down. Bucky walks out, blinking up at the sun, onto a fully fleshed-out main street. There are _shops_. Noise. _People_ , shuffling back and forth, and here he is at the mouth of a tunnel, covered in blood and tattered clothing. It almost physically _pains him_ , how conspicuous he is here.

And then a black van rockets its way up onto the curb, blocking him from anyone’s sight, quickly enough that, for a moment, HYDRA takes a back seat to his relief.  

Two HYRDA agents are stooped behind the sliding door, looking at him grimly, a square black cloth hanging between one of their hands.

“You’ll be wanting to come with us, then,” one of them says, his lips pursed to the side.

Bucky considers his options, realizes he has none, and climbs in with them, not struggling when they hold his hands behind his back, or when they drop the cloth over his head and all sound stops.

The hood they throw over his head is different than anything he’s ever seen. For one thing, it constricts on its own—not tightly enough to restrict his breathing, but enough that he doesn’t dare struggle more than once. One slight test, leaning his neck to the side in an effort to regain some of his hearing, and the cloth pulls up and in, a rigid line against his Adam’s apple. He doesn’t move again. It’s disorienting, not being able to hear what’s going on around him. He considers calling out, but for what? With his boots flat on the floor he can try and feel for their movements, but aside from one pair of boots walking away and another walking towards him, likely to replace the one who’d gone, there’s little clarity to be had. Just that they’re moving—moving west, he thinks, guessing as the car steers around a curve. And then there’s one heavy, targeted crack to the back of his head and he’s slipping out of consciousness fast.

+

Waking up is sharp and unwelcome.

He’s warm. The hood is draped over her face—draped. It’s been deactivated; when he tugs it off it comes easily, soft and slightly slippery to the touch. He tosses it across the room.

The room itself is soaked in sunlight, from the clean, modern furniture to the white duvet he’s getting blood on. His left arm sticks to it slightly when he pulls it away to sit up; he’s been here for a while, then. He looks around. It’s a nice hotel. Everything smells clean, a little like flowers. 

In front of him there’s a mirror.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he forces out quickly. “Bucky. 2014. New York.”

Bucky feels fine—bruised, a little battered, but all there, mentally, which is preferable. He jumps off the bed and lands on a large black suitcase instead of the floor, tripping his way onto plush white carpet before anything breaks.

“ _Instructions will be delivered to you_ ,” he mimics sourly, scowling down at the bag. “Or perhaps you will be delivered to your instructions. Ah! How clever! How _diabolical._ ”

The bag, predictably, doesn’t answer. It doesn’t even take a moment to compliment his delivery. He allows himself a moment to miss Steve—just a moment. Lightly, in a _Steve would probably laugh, screw you black bag_ sort of way. Because anything else would be crippling. Because anything else won't do him any good. This might.

He flips the bag open, and everything makes a little less sense.

There’s a staff laid against carefully placed cushions, curved at the end like a sickle, with a large blue stone nestled in the curve. It’s… pretty, maybe. Ornamental. A bit like a walking stick. On top of it is a little glass panel. Bucky picks that up first, because the stone looks like it might be glowing, and he doesn’t think he’s alright with that yet.

As soon as his fingers touch it, the glass panel flickers to life, a little communication screen that he holds up at eye level, waiting for Strucker’s materialized image to speak.

“Hello, Winter Soldier. If you are finding this message, it means you have awoken without any difficulties. I hope that you find your surroundings amenable. As you remember—or, perhaps, do not—“ He pauses to look pleased with himself, and Bucky rolls his eyes. “— our agents are usually—”

“Fast-forward,” Bucky commands. The man keeps talking. He snorts. At least the hologram’s true to life.

“—for their missions. Regardless, let me elaborate. The Freedom Festival, held in part to honor your new comrade. The president and many heads of state will be making an appearance, as will you. The festival takes place over the span of two days. You will act on the second. A package containing your target will be delivered to the foot of the commemorative Captain America statue. Another agent will be on hand to assemble the package’s contents. All you will have to do is take this staff to that site, and touch the tip of the staff to the contents in question.”

“Which are _what_?” Bucky mutters, exasperated.

“You may be wondering what, exactly, these contents are.”

“Incredible.”

“Unfortunately, it is not for me to say.” Bucky grits his teeth hard enough that he feels one of them crack. “You will, I assure you, recognize your target.”

Strucker pauses like he’s giving Bucky a minute to ask any questions. Bucky stares at the screen. Strucker smiles.

The screen goes blank with no warning. A moment later, it cracks in his hand, a thin tendril of smoke waving up from the fissure. He tosses it into the trash.

 

So it’s just him and the staff—an activation key of some sort, from the sound of it. The glow is stronger now than it was before Strucker’s transmission. It’s a cloudy blue stone, and it pulses in greeting when he moves closer to it. It’s beautiful. So bright. For a moment, it looks like the whole thing ripples, the armored plates along its length shifting in the sunlight.

Bucky reaches out, glides his metal fingers up the burnished brass, along the darker gray of the bladed end, testing the strength of the metal against his own. When he taps it, it rings out like nothing he’s heard before. Through all of it, his eyes are on the stone. It leaks light like it’s made of it, dripping it across his vision so that, even when he tries to look away, blue lines the edges of his vision.

It’s _begging_ for contact. He can feel the tendrils reaching out to him, connecting to him, like they’re sharing a lifeline. Like it’s important. Like it can make _him_ important. With it, he could do incredible things. He could seize his birthright. He could accept the power he wields. Be all the better for it.

 

He touches the stone.

 

His arm reacts _spectacularly_ poorly.

 

A percussive shock sends it spinning backwards, pinwheeling sharply enough that he ends up tossed against the side of the bed, his arm turning in its socket with a mind of its own, twitching and recalibrating faster than he can restrain it, wilder than any flesh arm would do.

“Right,” Bucky gasps, forcing his metal hand down with his flesh one and pinning it to his side, “No more of that.”

It jolts against him like bucking horse, sending spasms through his body as he struggles to control it, hissing out as the gears grind in ways they were never meant to.

“No— _time_ for this—Jesus— _Christ_ —”

It sends him against the bed once, twice, three times, his back colliding against the mattress hard enough that his hair whips into his eyes. Hard enough that he’d worry about whiplash, were he anyone else.

On the fourth toss, he reaches his foot out, trying to move with the convulsions.  On the fifth, he manages to catch the lid with the corner of his foot and nudge it closed. Just like that, his arm stops, the activity winding down. It’s smoking like the glass screen was. It’s only a hint, but the smell of it makes him worry about wire damage.

Either way, bad news from HYDRA’s tech department. And for their tech department—he doesn’t have anyone to look at the arm anymore. If anything else happens, he’s on his own.

He waits for the smoke to clear and his arm to cool. He pats down the outside of the case with his flesh arm, just in case, and he comes up with two black bags. One has a gun—he empties it, reloads it, arms it, and reverses all of it with the one hand. He can feel his instincts, all of his training in the movements, gliding over the weapon like it’s as apart of him as the arm on his left side.

He puts the safety on and tosses it on the bed.

He supposes he should be disturbed by it, but he can’t quite summon the feeling. He’s _good_ at it. And his skills are something he’s earned. Something that will keep him alive. Something that can save Steve’s life, which is infinitely more precious. He eyes the gun from the floor. There has to be a version of himself that’s warier of a gun than he is. One before service, before war. But he can’t feel that, either. All he feels is tired.

Tired and angry and finished with HYDRA. So he reaches for the gun again and hefts it in his hand, feels the balance and plays with it, for a moment, tossing it into the air and catching it, still spinning, with his fingers where they need to be. He’ll take the advantages he can get.

He drops back down to the floor to paw the other bag open and chokes on a laugh when he has. A pair of goggles comes out first and he presses them to his face, fumbling to click the strap shut over his hair with only one hand.

When he opens the case again, keeping his bad arm angled away, his vision is washed a pale, candy red, and the scepter isn’t moving, and the stone in it’s cradle isn’t glowing. The whole thing instead casts a shadow over itself, darker than anything else in the room. It’s a little creepy.

His mask is in the case, too, and he presses it over his face, sliding it into the slots that join it to his goggles. When he gets to his feet, the reflection facing him is just as creepy as the light-sucking light source. It’s him. It’s the Winter Soldier. Straight back, strong shoulders, ratty hair and a monster’s mask, living on one bloody purpose at a time.

“They have Steve,” he says, and the words ricochet off of the mask and back into him, finding their way into his ears through his mouth, breaking against his teeth, loosing themselves inside of him. “Это для него,” he says, and that fits better, at least, suits the mask. Suits the hiding. “I’m doing this for—I’m doing this to get Steve back. I’m going to save Steve Rogers. I’m going back for him. I’m not letting them keep him. I’m not.”

His reflection is straight and stone-faced and mocking him, and he walks closer to it, presses his hand against the glass over the mask, looks instead at the grime under his fingernails, the blood dried on his sleeves.

“I’m going back for him. I am going back for him.”

He doesn’t believe it until he rips the mask from his face, too hard; his hand snaps back and his knuckles crash against the mirror, splintering the bug-eyed face that stares back at him, fractured reflection reflecting back two-fold, a hundred-fold, all shaded red.

“Bucky Barnes,” he says quietly, “New York. Or—maybe not, anymore. Hell if I know. Under temporary employ of HYDRA.” He grins at his reflection and flexes his metal hand, watching small shards of glass fall from the joints. All in working order, then. “Really pissed off.”

He settles back onto the mattress fully-clothed to wait. He doesn’t notice when he falls asleep. When he wakes up again, it’s dark, and he showers quickly, hoping for a change of clothes. The drawers are full of black cotton and lycra, and he dresses for the next day, tucking himself up at the top of the bed with the gun sat between his spread knees.

He doesn’t sleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This is for him." 
> 
> \--
> 
> In addition to offering that (very likely a mess) translation, I wanted to say thanks for the comments! They are extremely appreciated. Thanks. :)


	20. However Long Later, Somebody Says

“ _Steve_.”

It gets through to him after too long, maybe. He isn’t sure. He also isn’t sure what his arm is doing up to its elbow in layers of cement, stone, and drywall, but what can you do.

“What,” he says blankly, pulling himself out and shaking the dust off of him, every knuckle cracking when the first unfurls.

“Lost you for a minute,” Sam says, and his face shouldn’t look like that, shouldn’t be frowning like that, because it’s not like Steve doesn’t _know_ , it’s not like there’s something _wrong,_ he just needed—just. He’d just needed _that_.

“I’m back,” he says, but his voice is rough, and when he clears his throat, his hand twinges. He glances down. Bruises are already forming along his fingers. One or two are probably broken. What can you do.

“Not yet you aren’t,” Sam says quietly, and Steve goes tense under the hand that he puts on his shoulder. “Listen, we’ll scout out the area, and come back to you to figure out where to go from there, okay? We haven’t lost yet. We’ll get him.”

“Them,” Steve corrects automatically, and his mouth is already open to apologize when he thinks better of it. “Them,” he repeats, “We’ll get _them_. If HYDRA’s heads want to keep popping up, we’ll just have to cut them off faster. Permanently. Every _single last one of them_ —”

Sam body checks him halfway through his turn towards the wall, his fist already lifting to drive his point home, straight through to the foundations of the house above them. But they’re chest to chest, and he has nowhere to swing so he falls forward instead, his hands flat against the wall and Sam, winded, below him.

“Alright,” Sam grunts, moving back to push at his chest with both hands, sending him away from any still targets. “I’m with you, man, you know I am, but not like this. You need to stay—”

“What? Objective?” he snaps, glaring at him. “There’s nothing objective about this. This is as personal as it gets, Sam, and I—”

“I didn’t say that! You don’t need to be objective, Cap, but you need to keep your mind _on_ an objective, or this is going to drive you crazy.”

“I—” Steve stops. A crumpled piece of fabric catches his eye.

It’s a battered, bloodstained handkerchief, folded like an arrow, pressed flat in the middle of the floor by a worn-treaded boot.

The relief Steve feels is barely founded, but it still makes him stumble on his way over to it. It’s got a boot’s imprint pressed into it. The tread looks like Bucky’s size. When he glances back at Sam, he’s smiling, if only just.

“We’re going to get him,” Sam says, and the smile grows when Steve matches it. “Whatever happens next, you’ve got me in your corner.” He claps him on the back.

The arrow points to one of the doors off the room. When they follow it, they find Natasha, Clint, Tony, and the others in a hallway that stretches far enough out from itself that it becomes a tunnel, cement bleeding into rock almost seamlessly.

“We’re not sure if—” Natasha starts, but Steve moves past her, sure and quick.

“It’s this way,” he calls back behind him, and then they’re all moving. The three agents in black fan out at the rear, their weapons ready. Tony’s behind them, his armed repulsors lighting the way. Steve’s at the front with his shield held high, just in case.

 

They empty out onto a street. A regular street. No soldiers. No weapons trained on them. Just suburban life on a little shopping strip. Another minivan drives past them. There’s a pizza place on the corner. In front of them is a secondhand clothing store, a record store below it.

“No,” Steve breathes, spinning around. The tunnel entrance is half-obscured from the street; the stones outside lie just so, enough that it looks like a sewage drain, maybe, something no one would go down without good reason. There’s nothing at the exit. No blood. No signs of struggle. Only weeds and tall grass, nothing short enough to leave behind a footprint. “ _No_.”

The relief that he felt shrivels and dies, leaving Steve with a plunging feeling in his stomach, desperate and too short on  hope.

“Hey,” one of the agents—22? 23?—says, a little hesitantly. “Good news, I think.” He cringes when Steve meets his eye, quailing under his stare.           

“If we can get it,” the other one says, a little more confidently, nudging the first with her elbow.

“Yeah, but it’s _something_.”

“Unless we can’t manage to—”

“Does somebody want to say what _it_ is?” Steve barks out. He’ll regret that, he thinks, in a little bit. One of the agents looks like he might faint. The other one rallies, her eyes narrowing at him.

“Street cameras. Look—two above the music store. One at the corner, turned this way. We might be able to see where they went.”

Steve blinks at them. “Can you—”

“Hack it?”

“Yes.”

“All we need is a computer, for the traffic one, and for the others—”

“The video feed is probably routed straight into the back of the store.”

They look up at him, their matching smiles fading the longer he stares back.

“Right,” he says, his mouth opening and closing before all that comes out again is another stilted, “right.”

Something like hope is buzzing again in his chest, and he pushes it down.

“I’ve got the traffic cam,” Tony says, from where Steve’s forgotten him behind them, his suit gleaming in the sun.

“Right,” Steve says again, and shakes his head at himself. _Really_. He can do this part. This part is tactics, is planning. Is preparation and deployment.

“Can you do that from somewhere less visible?” He waves his hand at Tony’s suit. “You aren’t exactly inconspicuous. We’re lucky no one’s running over for an autograph.”

“Says the man with a giant Frisbee,” Tony snorts, but he doesn’t argue, slipping back behind one of the rock outcroppings, his fingers rising up to tap at the air. “This’ll only take a minute. Send the twins over to stores’ banks.”

“We’re not—”

“Leave it,” the other one says, dragging the first across the street with a huff.

“I’ll go with them,” Steve says, switching his shield around to carry it against his hip, plain metal side out.

“I’ll go too,” Natasha says, following before he can say otherwise.

 

When they run across the street, they keep their heads down. If they can hack into cameras, so can HYDRA— they probably already _have_ , realistically. It’d be tactically irresponsible not to have some sort of control over them, especially so close to their base, no matter how temporary a base it was.

“We might have to deal with whoever’s in the shop, if the agents haven’t,” Steve says, and Natasha nods like she’s already considered it.

“It’s more likely they’ve got the managers on their payroll than that they’re actual HYDRA agents.”

“Still.”

 

They walk through the door of the first shop with their heads down, and Steve waves a hand in the air when the man behind the counter calls out a cursory welcome.

“Are they in the back already?” he murmurs to Natasha, who shrugs.

“They could’ve slipped back. Or—”

“Excuse me, you two, in the back? Your friends are asking for you.”

Their heads snap up. The clerk nods to them when they make eye contact and jerks his head to the side, drumming his fingers against the counter. When they reach him, he leans forward, his eyes wide and a little red-rimmed.

“Whoa. Are you, like, _actually_ Captain America?”

Steve recoils. “I’m—I—Is that what—”

“Yes, he is,” Natasha says smoothly, laying a delicate hand on his arm. “Are you interested in serving your country?”

“ _Dude_ ,” the clerk says, his eyes shining. “Fuck _me_. I didn’t even _want_ this shift. I can’t believe I _actually_ get to meet Captain America. Like, they promised, you know? But I figured they were probably just saying so to get me to let them back there.”

“Back there?” Steve points to the open door to the left of the clerk, the barely visible blue light from hidden monitors shining off the paint on the door.

“Yeah,” he says, a little dewily. When he shifts back to raise a partition for them to pass through, Steve gets a look at his bracelet. There’s a little replica of his shield suspended on a leather thread, wrapped twice around his wrist.

“Thank you for your help,” he says slowly, and smiles at the kid. His eyes go impossibly wider, and his grin makes Natasha laugh. “Couldn’t have, uh, done it without you.”

“Cool,” he breathes.

Steve pats him on the arm as they pass him. He squeaks.

 

Agents 22 and 23 are in the room, tapping at an old computer to rewind the footage from the cameras outside. They barely acknowledge Steve and Natasha’s entrance, too stuck on arguing over which button would do what.

“If you press here—”

“I’m not sending it back to the beginning just to see what happened in the last few—”

“Yes, but we don’t know _when_.”

“We know it can’t have been more than a few hours.”

“Oh, _do_ you? Amazing. I didn’t realize psychic abilities were in your skillset, Emma.”

“Stop _talking_ and do your _job_.”

“Allow me,” Natasha says, and reaches past them to tap in a few quick keystrokes.

The video spins back to the beginning.

Steve hushes the two junior agents before they can start, and Natasha presses another button, going through the recording at  eight times the speed. Her reflexes are almost as fast as his own—as soon as he sees what must be Bucky at the corner of the frame, a glint of silver and a flash of dark hair, he inhales sharply, and Natasha freezes the frame.

“He’s walking,” 22 mutters, pressing the button to play the video. “Look, he’s on his own, so—”

“He left under his own power,” 23 finishes, biting her lip. “Where are all of the—”

“Hostiles?” 22 shrugs, visibly discomfited, squirming back in his seat. “I don’t see anything.”

 

Bucky stands, visible and wary, and there’s too little color on the screen to know for sure, but Steve thinks that the darker patches on his face and on his arm might be blood.

The van is unexpected. It jumps the curb, swerves in too close to him and he’s hidden from view. A few moments later, it takes off, presumably with him inside it.

From the time-stamp, it happened an hour and a half ago. Steve still jumps. Still flinches forward, like he could do anything to stop it. Grinds his teeth like it’s his molars’ fault.

 

“On the plus side,” 23 says after a moment, “the plate’s clear enough when they pull back onto the street that we can track it. Camera by camera, if we have to.”

“Yeah, we’ll find him,” 22 says. It makes Steve smile, because it doesn’t sound like he’s saying it to him—he’s frowning at the screen, all petulant conversation, zooming in and inching it from side to side, clearing up the numbers.

“We will,” 23 says, and she looks up at him. Her eyes are wide and earnest, and when all he does is look back, she smiles at him.

Steve believes them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I am so unbelievably sorry this has taken so long._ Class started and never stopped and I just lost track of this entirely. But three cheers for summer, hey? Thank you for anyone still bothering to read this, and I am _so sorry._ Ironclad promise that there will be at the very least one other chapter this week, more than likely two. And it really is most of the way to finished. This one was a bit short, but mostly a pledge that I have not abandoned this!   
>  Alright. Babbling done. 
> 
> Oop, and I'm at [petulantsteverogers](petulantsteverogers.tumblr.com) if anyone would like a chat.


	21. To the East,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Bet you thought this was abandoned, eh?)

The sun rises too slowly. He watches it, because there’s nothing else for him to do—watches it move over his feet, his shins, his knees, slide against the gun and warm the handle. He starts to stand up seven, when the light’s hitting him in the eyes and he’s starting to get irritable, but the phone rings first. He stretches himself across the bed to pick it up.

 

“Yes,” he says tersely, his other hand curling tight around the gun.

“Hello, sir!” someone says on the other end—a girl, too perky, bright enough for it to be pushing sarcastic. “This is your requested wake-up call! Your car will be arriving at eight a.m. Breakfast can be ordered up to y—”

“That’s fine,” he says curtly, and hears the girl stutter to a stop.

“Right,” she says, all of the cheer dropping out of her voice. She sounds better bored. “Well, that’s all I’ve got for you. I hope Philadelphia treats you right, et cetera.”

He hangs up.

 

He doesn’t have any notable memories of Philadelphia. He’d tried, when he’d first seen the hotel’s stationary—tried to remember the hotel, the small notepad, maybe even the stale press of the sheets in a Motel 6— but he was luckless. His head stayed empty. Stays empty still—he closes his eyes and thinks _Philadelphia, Pennsylvania_ , and all he gets back is facts and figures. Population, a layout of the streets, average climate. Nothing personal. He supposes he should be grateful. At least he doesn’t remember killing anyone here. In Philadelphia, his hands stay clean.

At 7:05am, he goes into the bathroom to wash up, and to find a way to keep his hair out of his face. At 7:15am, he walks back into the bedroom, digs into the drawers until he comes out with a small selection of knives, and cuts off the black hem of a clean black shirt. He scrapes his hair down and around to the back of his head and ties it tight. And then, because he still has time, he switches shirts, to one that is equally black and most likely equally sturdy. Because he _still_ has time, he tosses the torn shirt into the air and throws the knife, just for practice.

When he leaves the room, the hilt of the knife is still quivering, hilt deep through the wallpaper, and the shirts are in a tight little bundle, a few inches higher. He makes sure he doesn’t forget the room key. 

The black van is stalled at the front of the hotel like it’s never left, idling and infuriatingly inconspicuous. Bucky pauses halfway there. He isn’t sure of the protocol, here—does he go up to the front? In through the back? The idea of another forced sedation has his fists curling in on themselves. If they think— 

The soft sound of a window motor catches his attention.  A black-gloved hand sticks out of the passenger side window and waves at him urgently. Bucky bites back the instinct to roll his eyes—it might be important.

It is, he realizes, as soon as he draws up to the window and sees the grin that meets him, not.

 

“Hi,” the man says, chipper like the girl on the hotel phone, but earnest about it. “I’m your partner, for the time being. Climb on in!” He must think Bucky’s hesitating about the _seating arrangement_ , because he adds, “We won’t need to be operating out of the back until we actually get there, and it’s a little bit of a drive. The passenger seat’s all yours!” Bucky keeps staring. “Unless you’d, uh, prefer to drive, Mr. Winter Soldier, sir.”

 

Bucky tries the passenger side handle. It’s locked. He closes his eyes.

 

“Open the door,” he says gruffly. The agent scrambles to comply.

He stays silent until Bucky’s closed the door behind him, and then that mouth is moving again.

“Anyway, my name is Agent—aw, what am I saying, you can just call me Bob. Call signs don’t seem like they’ll be that necessary for this mission, you know?”

He looks over to Bucky like he’s expecting him to chime in.

Bucky says, “Drive.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Bob says, painfully pleasant. They set off.

 

Ten minutes in and Bucky wants to kill him.           

_Bob_ is new to this. _Bob_ has been to Philadelphia once before, on a road trip, with his parents, when he was twelve. Bob still isn’t sure how he feels about guns—oh, don’t get him wrong, he likes them, likes firing them, but there are so many kinds, aren’t there, and is that really necessary? _Bob likes to talk_.

But more than anything else, Bob is so… _spirited_. He’s happy in a way that HYDRA agents, as a rule, _aren’t_. Bucky’s waiting to feel something darker from him—some kind of sadism, something cruel, something bad. But he’s so… _happy_.

 

“—and I’m really excited about the festival, it should be _such_ a blast.”

“A blast,” Bucky repeats sourly, sitting up a little straighter for the first time in half an hour. “Is that what we’ll be causing?”  

“I don’t really know what this mission is, actually. Just that I’m supposed to provide company!” Bob chuckles. His shoulders shake with it.

 “Company,” Bucky repeats. He doesn’t remember gritting his teeth so tightly, but the word goes through his teeth and then they close against each other, impossibly tighter.

“Company, back-up.” _Tomato, tomato_. Bob shrugs. “But why not mix business with pleasure, huh?” He tips his head towards Bucky and waggles his eyebrows. That’s _it_.

 

“Why the _hell_ are you with HYDRA?” Bucky tries for some kind of gravity with the question, with some kind of anger, but all that comes through is confusion: Bob is just. He’s. He’s bubbly. He should be in an office somewhere. He should be doing something tame, something generic, something legal. Bucky drops his head and rubs at a sudden spot of tension between his eyes. “How did they even let you in? Were you a pity hire? Was it nepotism? Why the hell would _you_ sign on with _HYDRA_?”

 

“The benefits, mostly,” Bob says, and he sounds a little insulted. Like he _isn’t_ the poster child of a bargain bin recruitment.

“The benefits,” Bucky repeats.  

“Of course. I’ve got a family.” He sniffs. “I’m the main provider.”

           

Bucky’s quiet for a few minutes, but it’s not for lack of trying—his mouth opens and nothing comes out, so he gives up on it. By then they’re on the last light before the street they need and his brain is transitioning over to mission-ready, focused on his surroundings. The streets are relatively quiet, but they won’t be when the parade is in procession. They’re driving towards the park, first, where the Freedom Festival will begin in earnest; the statue stands at the southern edge.

 

“I’ve been to this park before,” Bob says, cheerful once more. “Although we came down by train—have you done any East Coast train travel? You should really give it a shot—”

 

“No,” Bucky says. The word falls out of him embarrassingly quick, and he tries to play it off by retying his hair. Bob doesn’t seem to notice.

 

“I was a little skeptical too, honestly, I’m from the west coast, but it’s actually very—”

 

“I don’t have the best track record with trains.”

 

Whether it’s that Bob has read his file, or that word has spread—or, more than likely, that a little note of distress has crept into Bucky’s voice—he lets the car fall at last, into a perfect, still silence.

It lasts for thirty seconds before he turns on the radio. It turns out Bob likes to sing along.

 Bucky’s gonna kill him.

 

* * *

 

It’s only been an hour, and Tony’s going to kill him.

 

He’d told Steve, as clearly as possible—two hours, and they’d have a definite match, a location, everything they’d need. _Two_ hours. They’re just barely halfway through that and Steve’s already pacing a hole in the carpet Tony’s office, dragging dirt and general upset into the fibers.

 

“Do you want to maybe sit down,” Tony deadpans, because he’s asked that three times, and each time, Steve had shaken his head. This time, Steve looks at him from under his eyebrows. It says, very clearly, _Shut up_. Tony, very clearly, does not.

 

“Look, I know you’re nervous, but your friend is resilient at worst. He’s going to be fine.”

“Really,” Steve says sharply, “and what makes you think that? The fact that HYDRA has him? The fact that we don’t know where he is? The fact that—”

 

Tony’s computer interface beeps.

 

“ _Ohthankgod_ ,” he breathes, and drops down into his chair, rolling up to the display. Steve clusters in right behind him, close enough that he can feel his body heat.

“Do we have something?”

“About to find out, sunshine.” Tony looks up at him. “Will you sit _now_?”

 

Steve drops his bulk into the nearest chair and Tony resists the very real urge to roll his eyes. He turns back to the display and blows up the images that JARVIS has supplied.

“Philadelphia. Caught this at a hotel—I can get you the address in a minute. And— ah.”

 

The next series of photos have Bucky walking out to the van. He knocks at the window, climbs into the front seat. It doesn’t look good. It looks like he’s alright, operating under his own power, cooperating. Granted, Tony’s going to be the last person to judge someone poorly for cooperating, especially under dubious circumstances. But it’s _the Winter Soldier_. He couldn’t have fought back? Gotten his hands on a phone? Rigged up a radio transmitter?

 

“Steve,” Tony says, and what he wouldn’t give to _not_ be the person to say it. “How sure are you? About… Bucky?”

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, but it’s like his attention isn’t on him. His eyes are flicking between the images, cataloguing as much as he can. It takes a moment, but he freezes.

“Tony,” he says slowly, his voice carefully even. “What do you mean?”

Tony shrugs. “That looks like willful cooperation to me. I—”

 

He doesn’t get a chance to say more before Steve has hauled him out of his chair and onto his feet, his hands hooked into fists around Tony’s shirt, suspending him higher than he can brace himself against the floor.

 

“You saw the video,” Steve growls, and Tony puts his hands over Steve’s.

“I did,” he says calmly. “The video was convenient. Same with the arrow. Steve—” Tony shakes his head. “If HYDRA wanted you to think—”

“You _know_ what they did to him.”

“Does he look wiped to you?” Tony gestures to the screen. “JARVIS. Play video.”

 

On the screen, Bucky walks out of the hotel’s entrance, up to the van, and then talks to someone through the window. He gestures at the driver. When he climbs in, he hesitates. From the tilt of his head, it looks like he rolls his eyes. 

 

“Freeze frame,” Tony says. It comes out a little wheezy; Steve’s grip is tightening.

“No,” Steve says, but he doesn’t sound angry anymore; he’s detached, a little curious. “Keep playing, JARVIS.”

“Certainly,” JARVIS says, “but might I suggest lowering Mr. Stark. His oxygen intake levels are getting worryingly low.”

Steve drops him awkwardly and pats him on the chest. And then he _steals his chair_ to sit down closer to the screen. Tony wavers a little on his feet for a second before letting out a noise of outrage.

“Listen, Cap, throwing me around is one thing, but—”

“Tony, I’m sorry,” he says, impatiently and not half as earnest about it as Captain America _should be_ , “but _look_ , he’s doing something with his hand. Can you make that bigger?”

Tony sighs, but because he is a _saint_ , he says, “JARVIS, help the man,” and the image inflates.

Bucky is doing… something. Throwing up some kind of signal, signals that could be fidgeting if not for the urgency in the motions.

“JARVIS,” Tony says, leaning forward despite himself, “just play that… three second burst on a loop, and slow it down to three-quarters speed.”

 

“What is that?” Steve asks, frustration bleeding through the way his hands ball up on the table top. “I don’t know what—what is he doing?”

 

“Well, that’s an ‘L,’” Tony says, and if he’s a little smug… Steve tips  his head back to glare at him. “ASL I think. Alphabet, probably. Hang on.”

 

Tony pulls out his phone. In a few seconds, the video clip is sent off to Clint, and he sends them a word back a few seconds after that.

 

“Liber,” Tony says, and Steve takes the phone from him, as if he’d managed to read the word wrong.

“Liber? What is that, latin?”

“For ‘free,’” Tony volunteers, and frowns. “But I don’t know what the point of that is. Free him? He’s already free?”

Steve’s mouth opens, to chastise Tony or agree with him, he doesn’t know, but something else hits him and his mouth falls even wider, his eyes joining them.

 

“Liber. Liber-ty,” he breathes. “Liberty, the—the festival, they’re—”

Tony pulls his phone back from Steve’s hands and starts typing. “Time to go, Cap. That festival’s supposed to be huge.”

“I know,” Steve says, jumping up and walking from the room with Tony, towards the elevator for the roof. “I was invited.”

“You—” Tony frowns. “Why?”

“Guest of honor,” Steve says grimly, and presses the call button.


	22. After the Ride

Bucky spends the first half of the morning jogging through the park. Both he and Bob are pretending it’s inconspicuous, but he feels like an idiot. It’s warm and sunny and he’s wearing all black, a pullover to hide his arm with the hood up to hide his face. He gets a few looks, from people dressed like joggers _should_ be, but he does his best to ignore them. All he has to do is map out the park, and he already has a pretty good idea of what it looks like from an aerial angle, thanks to the maps that have taken up permanent residence on the ground floor of his brain.

 

So he jogs on automatic, and rifles through his mind while his feet do the busy work.

He doesn’t know Philadelphia personally, but he knows Boston. Knows New York, intimately, and Chicago less so. He has two Portlands in there, Maine and Oregon, and Los Angeles in the dreamy, sepia tones of stale memories.

He tries to take it a step farther, tries to find something deeper—the inside of a house, or an apartment, or a car, even—but his brain keeps springing back to the same place. A shoebox apartment, back when refrigerators were just boxes and he was half his size.

He trips over a gap in the pavement when he realizes that last part, and tries to zoom in on how he can tell.

Ah. There’s a kitchen counter that he can barely reach over, a kitchen sink whose handles require him to reach up, going up onto his toes to add extra, essential inches.

This memory isn’t sepia toned, but bright, rich, textured—he knows that it’s cold, and that he’s filling a wide glass with a rounded bottom. He knows that this isn’t his apartment, but it might as well be.

 

He slows to a stop in front of a statue. _The_ statue. The path has him right in front of it. Behind him is a wide, grassy area. The whole park is empty now, but for the five other early birds he passed on his way in. That’s not how it’ll look come the festival. It’ll be packed. The grass will be covered in picnic blankets, baskets, bicycles, children and dogs, kites and volleyballs.

He sighs, and pushes that to the back of his mind, the cliff he knows by feel, now—a hard enough push, and it’ll topple right over, lost to the darkness in the back of his skull.

He looks up at the statue instead. It’s a terrible likeness.

 

They’ve made Steve’s chin huge, his chest thrice the span of his not-insignificant hips, his thighs well-muscled and over defined.  He’s wearing a rakish smile, and his helmet is off, carved in at his feet, the chinstrap broken and both little wings angled high. His shield is massive and meaningful.

Bucky hates it, and he thinks, with no small amount of humor, that Steve would too.

 

But that’s where the package will be. At Captain America’s feet, ready to, figuratively speaking, destroy liberty. It’s right on the nose. He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to punch someone in the face quite as much as he does Baron von Strucker.

 

“Hey-o, is this thing on?” Maybe one other person.

“I can hear you,” Bucky says, and Bob lets out an honest-to-god giggle.

 

“Great! What do you see, Soldier?” Bucky sighs.

 

“It’s a park.”

 

“A… park.” Bucky can picture him jotting that down on a little notepad, and bites back a groan when he can hear the tell-tale scratch of graphite on paper. “Anything else we should know about the area?”

 

“It’s _literally_ a park,” Bucky repeats, annoyed. “There’s not going to be any significant security, because it’s a park. It’s not going to be difficult to walk into, because it’s a _park_. There aren’t any major concerns, because _it’s a park_. And this statue is _huge_ —” And ugly. “—which means I’ll have no issues locating it. It could be dark, and I could be blindfolded and handcuffed, I’d still be able to find it. Are we done here?”

 

“Wow,” Bob breathes, stunned and impressed.

 

“I wasn’t—”

 

“That is _impressive._ ”

 

“That wasn’t a serious—”

 

“I see why you’re the best of the best, Mr. Winter Soldier, sir, and I’m sure I’d be able to learn a lot from you if—”

 

Bucky pulls out his earpiece and tucks it into his pocket.

 

Yeah, the statue’s ugly, but it’s comforting in its size. Looking up at it, he feels like it goes on forever. Like it’s Steve, the guardian angel, above him and over him.

 

“Sarah Rogers,” his mouth says, with no input from him, and it clicks, suddenly. Steve’s mother’s apartment. Filling up that glass of water, sitting on the couch, racing to Steve’s room, and racing back out when he was asleep, finally, the fever letting up. Sitting with Steve’s mother and showing her the books he’d brought, sounding out the letters.

 

Bucky could be in New York in an hour thirty. One in a sprint.  

 

He can hear his earpiece squawking from his pocket, and there’s a new jogger coming down the path towards him, so he shoves it in and tries to be casual about it, taps it twice to get Bob to shut the hell up.

 

The jogger slows down the closer they get to him, and he finds himself looking up, just in case—but who else could he be blindsided by? He’s already fallen back into HYDRA’s nest.

 

“Hi.” The woman is blonde, pretty, and fit, barely sweating, even as her cheeks puff out, reddened from her effort. She smiles at him. He doesn’t know why.

 

She’s wearing a baggy t-shirt and running leggings. She looks innocuous enough, but he can’t be sure, especially not when her eyes snap to his and widen, just a fraction, noticeable and purposeful.

Bucky doesn’t say anything to her, but nods before looking back at the statue. But he’s hyper vigilant, now, can’t space out, re-enter his own head when there’s an unknown entity, bending over to tie her shoe, right next to him.

 

“It’s nice, right?” she says, glancing at him and then nodding to the statue.

 

“It’s a little much,” he says, and she shakes her head, but the motion is almost fond.

 

There’s something familiar about her. Bucky can’t place it. It isn’t that he knows her, more that he knows what she is, what she’s made of.

It’s not until she stands up that he realizes that she moves like a soldier—no, smoother than that. Like a spy.

 

She’s not on the team he’s playing for now, he knows that as soon as she looks at him, meets his eye without fear or hesitation and nods at what she sees there.

“How’s your day going so far?”

“Fine,” he says tersely. He doesn’t know her codes, and she doesn’t know his; this feels like a redundant exercise.

“Looking forward to the festival? I am. I hear it’s gonna be—”

“A blast,” he says, because so help him God, if she says what Bob’s said—

But her eyes narrow the way his did when she hears it.

“I have friends coming in for it,” she says, and there’s an urgent, tense note to her words. “I think they’re looking for some excitement. Maybe I’ll bring them by. Show them the statue…”

He nods at that, short and sweet, and she smiles.

“I’m trying to decide which day to pick, though,” she says easily, stepping away from him. She folds her hands together and raises them above her head and then across her side in a long stretch.

One hand is folded into an ASL S, the other a loose R.

Bucky closes his eyes. Of course they’re looking for Steve, and better luck to them. But this is his fault. He’ll fix it.

“Second day’s the peak, isn’t it?” Bucky licks his lips. “It’d be a shame to miss that. Hear there might be fireworks.”

Bob, in his ear, gasps.

“I hope you don’t like this girl, Mr. Soldier,” he tuts, and Bucky fights back a twitch. “If I know anything about HYDRA, it’s that their parties usually end bloody. But I mean,” he hurries to add, “It’s always for, you know, _the cause_ , or whatever, but—”

“But if you’re angling for a date,” Bucky says, all charm, and Bob gasps again, “Don’t waste your time looking for me. I intend to make myself scarce.”

 

The agent’s eyebrows crease together in concern, and it looks, remarkably enough, genuine.

“Skipping the festivities?”

 

“I don’t know,” he says, and wishes there was a way to tell her that he’s lethal, more lethal than ever. Lethal to himself, to Steve, to a crowd. To Steve, to Steve, to Steve, and it keeps coming back to that, doesn’t it? The things he’d do to for him, to protect him. Out of—out of _love_ for him, and as soon as he thinks the word, it unfurls inside of him, and it fits. It’s not a realization, it doesn’t shift anything, it doesn’t shock him the way he thinks it ought to. Instead, it slips into place: loving, being in love, being loved. It ties the memories that he has together, a golden thread that he can follow on to the next one, still disordered, still a mess, but viscerally present. It’s what he’s been looking for.

It’s the sappiest thing he’s ever thought, and he wants to make fun of it, to mock it until it shrivels away, but the one person he wants to mock it with is the reason for it.

It is, he decides, the stupidest thing in the world.

 

“I hate to interrupt, buddy, but there’s a bell tower that we need eyes in.” Second stupidest.

 

Bucky tugs at his earlobe and makes sure the blonde woman sees it.

 

“I’ll be on my way, then,” she says, jogging in place for a moment to warm her muscles back up, though he doubts she needs it. “Hope I see you soon.”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, before he can stop himself, and he hates how desperate he sounds

The smile she shoots him as she jogs away is all artifice, pretending she doesn’t understand what he’s done, what he will do, and he respects her for that. 

 

“The tower in the middle?” Bucky asks Bob quietly. He knows the one. It’s tall and narrow and more decorative than anything, the bell itself rarely rung. It would ring during the festival, on the beginning of the first day and the ending of the second, though that last one, considering HYDRA’s plan and Bucky’s part in it, likely wouldn’t come to pass.

 

“The very one,” Bob says, kind or thoughtless enough not to mention Bucky’s apology. “We’ll be wanting you at the top. You should have a clear eyeline to the statue, so you’ll be able to see the signal, when you’re needed. There’ll be speakers in front of the statue, so you’ll need to creep around the back. It’s a public park, plenty of people around— should be a cakewalk.”

 

Bucky can blend in. He can creep around a crowd unnoticed. He can detonate an explosive in the middle of a celebration.

He can do anything. He’s the Winter Soldier.

 

Only the problem is that isn’t anymore, not really. He has the training, the skill, the face, the arm. But not the blankness. Not the ruthlessness.

He’s never been backed into a corner like this one.

 

So he goes across the park, runs slowly across the green and up to the tower. There’s a maintenance door on the back of it, and he looks down at it. He could be careful about it, pick the lock, leave no sign that he was here. But he’s found that Bucky Barnes is impatient, and a little careless, carries recklessness as a virtue, so he wrenches it open instead, and barely spares a second to hope that no one heard the sound of the metal ripping apart.

 

The staircase inside the bell tower is a narrow, rickety spiral, and he’s up it in seconds, on a little mesh platform and ducking around the bell to look out the open arch.

He can see the statue. He can see the whole park. He can see where public service workers are marking off the bounds of the festival with wooden posts. He can see how large it’ll be, how many people, project the numbers in his head, and it’s so much. There are so many people.

 

“So I just walk up behind the statue and poke it with the stick they left for me,” he mutters. He’s not really looking for clarification; just for an out, any out, to appear. “What if they have the area cordoned off?”

 

“I have a rifle for you, if you want it. A few knives, a few handguns. Quite a selection.”

“You want me to kill my way in?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Bob says, “let’s not get too hasty. All you need is to get them out of the way.”

Bucky has a strong feeling that Bob doesn’t do much fieldwork. That, or the cheerful, sunny bubble he’s surrounded himself with doesn’t notice things like death and bloodshed and traumatic violence. Lucky him.

“I’ve seen what I need to,” Bucky says, and starts moving for the stairs. “I’ll be down at the van in a minute.”

“Okey dokey,” Bob says.

 

Bucky makes a list in his head—the clothes he’ll need, some food, to clean the guns, select his knives. He doesn’t think about love or self or safety because he doesn’t get to have that. This is him choosing: Steve gets to have that, and he gets to make sure that Steve gets a chance to.

He’s secondary. Tertiary, he amends, because he can still see that crowd. He can see a little girl laughing at her balloon, a couple sitting side by side on a worn out blanket. Bucky himself is in last place.

 

If he’s backed into a corner, he’ll have to go through the wall. The rest of the room matters too much to risk anything less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to finish this. It has been too long coming, but. I. _Will_.
> 
> Thanks for reading! And, as ever, kudos/comments are welcome and encouraged, even if it's just to cry at Bucky's sad. 
> 
> Additionally, there should only be about 3 or 4 chapters left! We're about to wind down!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me, pester me, cry about Bucky with me, etc: [right over here.](http://ragingbisexuals.tumblr.com) (Recently updated that url, sorry about the misdirect!)


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